The key is to create the contexts that allow failing to be seen as something other than defeat. In the entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley, for example, failure is not only tolerated, it is massively funded—because the risks are worth it.
From Anne Burdick, et al. “Digital_Humanities”. Page – 22.
As I was reading through this engaging article on the history and origins of Digital Humanities, this particular passage really stood out to me and made me think. I’m glad the authors of this article are highlighting this rather simple but misunderstood idea about failure. It all sounds so familiar, the concept of ‘learning from one’s failure’ or ‘failure being one’s path to success’. But, failures are still viewed in most institutions and households as being blameworthy and admitting to one’s failure is considered equivalent to taking the fall. The word has come to mean something terrible and shun-worthy. However, with fields such as Digital Humanities and IT cropping up and celebrating the act of failing, maybe even rewarding it, I’m hopeful that it will be reconstructed as positive and important.
Growing up in a society where my worth was measured by my successes and achievements was quite detrimental to my development when I was younger because it kept me from trying new things and exploring activities outside my comfort zone. I wanted to excel at everything I did and so I only started doing what I knew I was skilled at. It’s so easy to let ourselves be bogged down by our unsuccessful moments and crawl back into our shells of only doing what seems familiar to us. But as preachy as this sounds, I’ve now convinced myself that every failure is an opportunity to grow. My uncle, a recruiter for a Fortune 500 company, told me that this reasoning was precisely why employers often ask their candidates what their weaknesses are during interviews. It forces one to reflect on their past and recognise their strengths. When interviewing for a summer internship this past year, I met with a lot of company representatives who were staunch supporters of the ‘fail fast’ and ’embrace failure’ narrative. As long as one uses their unsuccessful endeavours as a stepping stone to better themselves, they are helping themselves and maximising their perseverance, I was told.
In fields such as Digital Humanities, which are still so influenced by humans and manual work compared to other more automated fields, trial and error should be normalised and encouraged so that new and better ideas emerge from older ones. I’m interested in further exploring how Digital Humanities as we know it today, was shaped by such experimental failures. I am also very interested in exploring tools like the 3-D modelling tool, SketchUp, that we explored last week and in learning more about accessibility within Digital Humanities considering that it is a very controversial topic and one of contention in a lot of more technical fields.
I was going to choose this quote too!
Thank you for sharing your childhood experiences and interview tips with us. I’m kind of still grappling with the idea that failure is OK and even beneficial, but we’ll get there 🙂