Teaching Perspective and Resiliency to Students Will Help Them Succeed, Not Fail
By: Ashley Broadwater
Tags: Education, Leadership, Psychology, Parenting, Mental Health

Teaching Perspective and Resiliency to Students Will Help Them Succeed, Not Fail Ashley Broadwater Follow Jul 17 · 4 min read

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

“My first year of college, I had a 1.7 GPA,” my professor told my class my sophomore year at UNC-Chapel Hill.

I sighed in relief.

My GPA was much higher than that, so I wasn’t worried, per se. But seeing how someone can be in such a low place and still succeed really encouraged me. As a perfectionist and type three who worries too much about success, this is the message I needed.

We can fail and still succeed: That’s what we call resiliency.

My whole childhood, an emphasis was placed not only on good grades, but As. This wasn’t hard for me — I usually got As — but the pressure was a lot sometimes. I never really learned about the more crucial importance of maintaining my mental health.

I’ve never been someone who needed mentors or coaches to be tough on me. I’m a people-pleaser and I want to succeed and do good in the world. I don’t need an extra push. In fact, extra pushes — especially in the form of a firm tone or yelling — only make me cry.

As a middle school and high school student, I would cry and stress over bad grades. But thankfully, my dad taught me about the importance of perspective.

In other words: Yes, do your best, but know that one bad grade won’t matter next year or in five years. It’s just one grade and one class — I’ll survive it. I’ll have other good grades, and I’m doing my best. Further, what “my best” is may change due to life events that are out of my control. That’s all okay, normal and understandable, and it doesn’t decrease my worth. We can and will bounce back.

While success stories can be inspiring and are worthy of praise, we need to talk more about “failure” stories too. Students need to see that we all fail sometimes, and that our lives and careers still work out. We can’t let students’ mental health continue to drastically decrease over a number, a letter. We can’t let them continue to think that one bad grade will ruin them or indicate that they’re stupid.

Those are the thoughts they’re having. According to a Princeton Review study, over 50 percent of students said they felt stressed and 25 percent said homework was the cause. Additionally, students spend over a third of their time feeling overwhelmed.

According to the American Psychological Association, 28 percent of college students went to counseling because of the anxiety they felt over their academic performance.

Additionally, according to Education Week, when students are asked to do more than they can, their bodies release cortisol, a stress hormone. In turn, they can’t form memories as well and don’t do as well in school.

However, research shows that learning about failure helps students succeed. According to a 2016 study by the Journal of Educational Psychology, students who learned about the struggles and failures of successful scientists — such as Albert Einstein — improved academically afterwards.

If we want their stress to lessen, we can’t be scared to share our personal failures. Through sharing these anecdotes, we’re really depicting resiliency. Vulnerability is a strength that brings us connection. Through being vulnerable, we realize we aren’t as alone as we think, and that we have no reason to be ashamed.

“When we ignore fear and deny vulnerability, fear grows and metastasizes,” said Brené Brown, shame researcher and storyteller. “We move away from a belief in common humanity.”

Brown continued to discuss how we can connect with others and humanity as a whole through pushing past that fear and being vulnerable with others. Through that vulnerability, we help others feel more safe and comfortable doing so themselves.

“If leaders really want people to show up, speak out, take chances and innovate, we have to create cultures where people feel safe — where their belonging isn’t threatened,” Brown said.

For students to have and share their voices, for students to critically think and succeed, they can’t be afraid of judgement or failure.

One of my professors senior year showed my class this in a beautiful way: He showed us a stack of rejection letters he’d received.

Again, the message I got from him was not that I shouldn’t try to succeed, but that we all fail, and that our lives and careers still work out.

He also comforted me by sharing that our first jobs may not be my favorite jobs. Despite all of the positive posts we see on social media — especially LinkedIn — many people aren’t in love with their first job out of college.

“Your first job is all about looking for your second job,” he said.

His honesty was refreshing. So often we talk about our successes and how perfect our lives are. So often we hear about people’s accolades and awards.

And then we think that we’re failures because we aren’t succeeding in those ways.

But sometimes, those successes we hear about are not as perfect as we think.

People get internships through nepotism. People have internships that are unpaid or in which they have to deal with unkind people. And even the most successful people have still had their downfalls, and still feel insecure sometimes.

I remind myself to remember Pastor Steve Furtick’s words: “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

Failure can be inspiring; failure can unify us. Failure doesn’t mean we aren’t talented or smart. Hearing perspective about failure can help us realize that everything will be okay, not that we shouldn’t try.

And by sharing that perspective and taking all of that pressure off of students, they’ll be healthier and more likely to succeed and feel good about themselves.

And isn’t that what we really want?