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 The Art of FailureBy NELS'ON ELLIS
"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300
games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.
I've failed over and over again in my life…"
—Michael Jordan
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| Nels'on Ellis (Photo by Anna Thompson) |
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At some point around the third year of my academic career at Juilliard, my
passions waned. I collapsed and miscarried faculty relations and altogether
flopped in projects, in my opinion. I discovered the onus of failure on the
soul, and wondered if I would ever resurrect myself. Quite frankly, I spent a
lot of time like a freshly dead body, waiting for an electric shock, looming
in a state of lifelessness and longing. I felt I had failed as a brother, a
son, a boyfriend, a student. I had not learned to conform to faculty
expectations. I brought work into the classroom where other students looked at
me through slanted eyes, wondering what the hell was I doing. After I felt
like I'd left blood on the floor, no one clapped, no one said "good job" … I
failed. I didn't have jovial relationships with the faculty … I failed. I
didn't want to be there because I failed. Then I wondered, what does it mean
to go to school?
A few years ago a friend of mine committed suicide just weeks before his third
year of school started. I knew what he claimed as his failures, what he
thought were his deficiencies. Having determined that he had flunked life,
unable to bear the heaping weight of his own shame and others' slander (either
in his head or not), he ended his life. What was left in my own mind was the
paramount question: When did it come to be that one cannot fail—and a student,
no less? Why did that seem to be an unpardonable sin? I now realize it's much
deeper for some individuals than being on probation, not trusting one's
abilities anymore, or just being asked to leave school. It strikes at the very
atom of the issue, which is whether or not one can get back up from the gravel
of failure, dust off and tackle life. It's believing one has the worth and the
goods to be better. And that only comes with the power to accept the low
points—the valleys, the ditches, the canals that bequeath discouragement. This
is not to excuse failure, but rather to question its role. It's inevitable and
plays a necessary role in growth, character development, and the learning
process.
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What it means to go to school is that we are really allowed to fail—through
which we discover our better selves.
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I have failed so many times, I've failed the same failures over and over
again. I've been called a fuck-up—but while my actions warranted it, my
character didn't. Someday I'll be so much greater than what I am now, and the
role of institutions of higher education is to inspire individuals to become
the greater selves that their potential destines them to be—not to condemn
students, but rather to challenge and move us to become the best that we can
be. It must be O.K. to fail while learning; it blazes the trail for growth and
eventual success. It must be O.K. to fail in life because it fuels wisdom,
which wraps itself around our unknowing and reveals its secrets. If a student
has to learn the same lesson many times over, I importune educators to stay in
the fight, for if you damn us for the actions of the moment, we have no hope
of being anything better. We've failed our own expectations so much, we don't
know if we can rise to a greater calling. What it means to go to school is
that we are really allowed to fail—through which we discover our better
selves, and instructors empower their students with the notion that there is
life after failures.
I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300
games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.
I've failed over and over again in my life and that
is why I succeed…"Nels'on Ellis is a fourth-year drama student.
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