Freedom to Fail

three faculty members against yellow background with yellow, with multi-colored sprinkles and designs — Faculty members Allan Friedman, Bridgette Martin Hard and Steffen Bass share their own stories of failure and setbacks. (Design Shaun King/Trinity Communications)

What if failure wasn’t a bad thing?

Get accepted to a top university, get good grades, keep your GPA as high as possible, find the perfect research opportunities, graduate with honors and land your dream job, avoiding even the tiniest of failures at all costs. These might have been your goals at the end of high school, but real life will always look different. At some point, things will go wrong, and you will fail. But that failure isn’t something you should avoid at all costs — in fact, it’s something you should embrace.

Don’t take it from us: let faculty give you Freedom to Fail, by sharing their own stories of failure and setbacks, and telling you how those experiences have led to personal and professional growth. Take a peek at the human side of some of the most accomplished professionals on campus. You’ll see that failure isn’t just something to fear; it can actually be something to celebrate.

“People who take chances are usually more successful than those who play it safe.”

Allan Friedman

Lecturing Fellow of Music

“Do you want to hear how I crashed in front of an 80-piece orchestra and 120-voice choir?”

So began Allan Friedman’s story of failure. Read the story of how Friedman, then an overeager and nervous student, committed a costly and embarrassing mistake in a very dramatic setting.

“I tell this story to all my conducting classes,” he said. “I'd rather my students fail by taking a chance on something, than being too scared to try it in the first place.”

Bridgette Martin Hard

Professor of the Practice of Psychology and Neuroscience

Bridgette Martin Hard researches how students view their own intelligence through the lens of fixed and growth mindsets.

But the Psychology and Neuroscience professor has plenty of experience worrying about her own mindset, citing a specific professor who ripped her writing to shreds.

"The amount of red ink all over this paper, and then the grade, which was lower than any grade I'd ever received in my entire life...,” she says. “I was in tears, freaking out thinking, ‘how did this happen?’"

Read about how she took this failure and learned from it, and what she said to that professor when she saw him years later.

Steffen Bass

Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics

Steffen Bass is not someone who minces words when it comes to failure.

As a postdoc on the job market, Bass was only met with disappointment. "I thought I was hitting it out of the ballpark,” he said. "I thought my CV and everything looked really good. And I did not get a single job interview.”

Read the story of how risking unemployment was actually key to his current success as a professor of Physics.

Freedom to Fail

Allan Friedman

Lecturing Fellow of Music

Bridgette Martin Hard

Professor of the Practice of Psychology and Neuroscience

Steffen Bass

Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics

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