Bain’s chapter includes a variety of examples to illustrate approaches/responses to failure. Which one(s) come close to your own response(s) in the past? Quote/describe that example or those examples from Bain. Explain the text-to-self connection by illustrating your connection with at least one specific example from your life.

Based on the examples that Bain presented in his writing, I have to say that in the past, my relationship with failure has not been all that great. I had been told pretty much all of my life that I was incredibly smart, and although I appreciated the confidence boost, it ended up making me incredibly nervous to do anything that I knew that I wasn’t the best at. “Her father always emphasized that she could do anything she wanted to do, and her teachers said she was one of the brightest students they had ever encountered.”(Bain 101). This was similar to the experience that I had while growing up, in that my teachers and parents told me that I was so smart, I could do anything. One example of when this affected me is when I was a freshman in high school, it was a time where I could have involved myself in creative things like winterguard or art classes from the beginning. But because I was afraid of getting a failing grade that could hurt my chance to get into college, I didn’t take art that year. Luckily, I decided to take AP Art my senior year, and although my senior year was kind of a mess by the end, I was glad that I had decided to take the class. One of the reasons that I decided to take this class was because I had taken ceramics, since taking an art course was required, and my art teacher said that since I had put so much effort into the pieces that I had been creating in that class, she encouraged me to take AP Art the next year. She always encouraged my effort, even when my projects weren’t the strongest, and it was this kind of encouragement that mattered the most to her. Whether my art project was developed enough to be submitted to the College Board was something that could be fixed with time, but instead, it was my effort in making the pieces that she applauded.

We’re at midterms. How might Bain’s ideas help you put your academic work so far into a context for “success” or making the most of college? You might also bring in Duckworth. Be specific by including textual evidence and details about your term.

I think that by reading Bain’s work, I need to work on putting my college life into perspective. Most of high school my biggest fear was not getting into a good school, or simply not being good enough for one. But now that I am in college, I need to step back and recognize that not failing my entire life is not an option if I want to actually have a fulfilling life. What good does it do to refuse to do something that I have always wanted simply because I am afraid of getting it wrong? Although I say this now, these kinds of habits are hard to break, and I recognize that it will probably take a while before I can psych myself up enough to actually dive into something without a fear of failure. I need to reteach myself the meaning of the word “failure”, and dispel the anxiety that I have been taught around that word in my life. “That attitude seeps into every action and interaction, and students pick up the message.”(Bain 110). I know that in some areas of my education, I could tell from other students as well as myself that the word failure was basically condemning that student to fail again in the future. This kind of attitude scares students into believing that if they fail one class, or even just a couple of tests, that they won’t be able to get far in life once they leave school.