Failure can either teach or deceive us, discourage us or propel us onward. One of life’s early lessons is that “we all make mistakes”; indeed, it is hard to imagine any worthwhile learning process without them. At the same time, however, failure carries a heavy stigma in contemporary Western society. Drawing from the annual spring Hutton Honors course “Failure, And How We Can Learn From it,” this presentation will examine the phenomenon of failure from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including psychology, education, science, business, literature, athletics, medicine, and engineering and design. How do these different disciplines view failure, and how do they seek to learn from it? We will also explore how different cultural and ethical traditions might understand failure in different ways. Finally, we’ll consider how these insights might inform our personal lives—how can failures serve as meaningful experiences that promote learning and growth?

This talk is adapted from a spring-semester course offered through the Hutton Honors College and presented by Themester 2021: Resilience and the Hutton Honors College with assistance from the  Arts and Humanities Council staff at the Gayle Cook Center at Maxwell Hall.
Go to this link to register for the event https://events.iu.edu/themesteriub/event/202114-1