The college experience is one where students will inevitably be confronted with two concepts: failure and group projects. The question is: which is worse? The fact of the matter is that learning to fail, work with others, and even fail with others is a vital part of a student’s academic growth. Collaborating and failing extend well beyond the classroom and even the workplace a student eventually finds themselves in. Truly, a well-rounded person knows how to fail in stride and takes those experiences gained and uses them to teach others they may find themselves in the company of.
Maya Ostfeld writes an uplifting essay on how failing is an important part of any writer’s development. She writes, “Failure should be a normalized process in life. We must fail in order to grow. To get up and try again. Failure makes us resilient…”. I, as others might, appreciate that Ostfeld recognizes that failure is innately a human experience. We learn the lesson and become better people (and writers) from that point on. It’s only when avoiding failure that development is halted.
On working together, Rebecca Ingalls writes a piece titled “Writing “Eyeball to Eyeball”: Building A Successful Collaboration” in which the focus is all about learning to collaborate with other students. She highlights the relationship between John Lennon and Paul McCartney and how their paired writing ultimately led to the success of The Beatles. A big theme of these two writers as well as some of her own advice is learning to work with others who are different. While it’s often enjoyable to work with friends, the true “magic” of collaboration happens when there’s a healthy amount of discord.
It’s always scary to fail, especially when it happens while working with others! Still, there’s always a lesson to be learned and that tends to happen after a failure. You and your collaborators get the opportunity to try again and do an even better job of it.
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