Failure is an essential part of success
August 29, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, college, encouragement, failure, humor, parenting, parenting a child in college, successI have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. ~Thomas Edison
Try again. Fail again. Fail better. ~Samuel Beckett
One fails forward toward success. ~Charles F. Kettering
With our eldest finishing his second week at college, we are all quickly getting our first college failures out of the way. This is good news. It’s good to fail as quickly as you can, to learn as quickly as you can, too.
For instance: we thought we could manage without his having a cell phone. I hate cell phones on a visceral level, and they are bloody expensive, besides. And didn’t *I* manage college without having a cell phone?
But it turns out that our son does need a cell phone. Moreover, his parents need him to have a cell phone. Our 18-year-old has not yet activated the phone in his room, nor does he regularly check his email, nor does he write letters, either. Too busy, too overwhelmed, too inexperienced, too new? Whatever the reasons, we’ve been largely out of contact with him for these very important first few weeks of his college experience, and guess what? There have been some problems. Together, the three of us have failed to manage that much separation, all at once, this soon in the “growing up and leaving home” process.
Furthermore, all of his friends arrange their meals and other social activities together by cell phone. (Or on Facebook, but you can only go into so much detail with so much efficiency on Facebook. )
Turns out, too, that cell phones are herding devices, serving the same function as the call of migrating geese, who honk constantly back and forth in order to organize themselves in proper V-formation.
Who knew? We only learned all this, about cell phones, by failure.
I also learned (again) that my own successful experience (going to college without a cell phone) does not necessarily make me an expert about someone else’s experience. The problem is that I was successful in college without a cell phone. All of us were, back then, of course. But things are different now, and consequently my husband and I had something new to learn, right along with our son.
But we had to fail, first, in order to learn it.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Check out pre-paid cell phones. Buy a phone, buy a card, talk until they won’t let you anymore.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Your comparison to migrating geese is “right on” as in “brilliant” – good writing. But then I may be prejudiced.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
I’ve heard the prepaid ones are a good way to go. I’ve heard that USCellular is amazingly inexpensive, as is Cricket. But if you already have a cell, then getting a family plan where you are is probably the best.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I can only imagine what college would have been like if we’d had cell phones. Or e-mail. Or even iPods! But I did talk to my now-wife for the first time at college on Relay, AKA IRC, so at least we had that.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Hi Almost Got It,
I can’t believe that the big D is in college. Yikes! Where did the time go?
I’m one with pages who suggested the idea of prepaid cell phones — up in Canuckland we have Virgin cellular — and I’m saving over 30 Canuckshekels a month. I’m not shilling, I’m just sayin’……
I’ve taught oodles of high school students who have had cell phones for the better part of the last 12 years. Abby Hoffman, the late activist-comic, stated in his memoir that America has more TV sets than toilets; I think that there are more cell phones than toilets in not only America but in the entire world.
Sheesh!
September 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am
Almost,
I couldn’t imagine leaving my son 45 minutes away every.single.day without a cellphone for HIGH SCHOOL, because it’s just too far. I feel ya about COLLEGE! There’s no danger in my son using too many minutes. The only people he calls are me and his dad. Sometimes, just for kicks, he calls me from the back of the van.
And secretly, I wanted him to have a cellphone to combat some of the “homeschool nerd” social issues.
I’m glad you’re always learning from your mistakes. More than that, you are teaching us.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I agree times have changed so much. I also like the pre-paid cards for cell phones. But you know what? I survive just fine without one. On the other hand our 2 sons would say they couldn’t survive without one.
Good luck to your son and all your learning experiences.
I love the quotes you have on failure/success. It is rules I live by.
Have a great day!
Pam
September 1st, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Amazing. I do agree that cell phones have changed life completely. Maybe even more than the Internet. And if everyone else has one, it would be a pity for your son to be the only one without…..
still……I think back to when we went to college and didn’t contact our parents for weeks at a time and no one thought it was at all unusual! Why do you think this level of connection has changed so dramatically?
Because families are smaller?
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:34 am
Pre-paid does work nicely if you don’t do a lot of talking. I have one now because I hate talking on the phone, so I don’t use a lot of minutes. In the past though I’ve had something similar to Cricket, which worked out nicely because it wasn’t a contract and there were unlimited minutes for a set monthly fee. Anyway, there’s my 2 cents for ya!
September 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
Thanks for all your terrific comments — and suggestions! We discovered that we could add our son to our existing “family plan” for only $10 extra per month, plus he got a free phone. My dh and I don’t use our own phones much, so we didn’t even increase the number of shared minutes on our plan. We’ll see how it goes.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:18 am
“Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
You’ve failed many times, although you might not remember.
You fell down the first time you tried to walk.
You almost drowned the frist time you tried to swim, didn’t you?
Did you hit the ball the first time you swung a bat? Heavy hitters, the ones who hit the most home runs, also strike out a lot.
R.H. Macy failed seven times before his store in New York caught on.
English novelist John Creasey got 753 rejection slips before he published 564 books.
Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times, but he also hit 714 home runs.
Don’t worry about failure.
Worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
Full Disclosure:
With Thanks to http://WWW.UTC.com as published in the WSJ, 1981.