Randy Nelson mentions recovering from failure

First watch this:

I was going to really generalize the title, but then decided against it and decided to draw attention only to the part he talks about recovering from setbacks/failure. This is something that really makes sense to me and it is something that I think is at the root of some of the ills that are being seen in the post-secondary student and researcher population.

The first thing, and the most obvious is the problems students have when they get to the university with general course work. This is nothing new, but it seems to be increasing as students are floating through High School as they learn to avoid problems well enough to get the marks that they need. This continues through into their first term of university studies. Then when they get the first assignment back with something less than a 90, they are just floored (I’m exaggerating, teasing those kids that aced grade 12, but you get the idea) and some of them start to get shaken, others who legitimately fail their first assessment of any kind are completely beside themselves and never get back up.

The second thing is related to this. Last night I was talking with my brother and he came up with an interesting idea. There needs to be a “Journal of Failed Results”. This way, that work that doesn’t “work out” can still be useful to the greater community. It can be taken and “plussed” as Randy would say, or it can be used as evidence that a researcher can recover from a setback.

There is that old axiom that one learns more from falling/failing than you do [insert successful action here] and it seems to me that there are certainly others that feel the same way, now all we need is some way to get employers and educators to see this as well and reward it.