To Err Is Human: On the Necessity of Making Mistakes

When Boyfriend asked why I didn’t like it when he teasingly reads what I’m writing over my shoulder, I told him that was because it was garbage. Not, I hastened to explain, the self-effacing “oh all my work is garbage” kind of garbage, but, like, actual garbage: this is a first draft, the garbage I have to get down so later I can throw most of it out and shape what’s left into the good stuff.

Being a computer scientist, Boyfriend jokingly asked why I don’t skip the garbage step and write the good stuff from the start.

Well, I would if I could. But I can’t. And, more importantly, I’ve learned that having some magical garbage-free process as a goal is not only unrealistic but detrimental to my writing.

And my life in general.

When I was a kid, my parents were worried that I didn’t have much experience with failure. I was pretty good at school — every concept I encountered in math or English felt intuitive to me. They knew that one day, I’d encounter something I struggled with, and they wanted me to learn how to deal with it while the stakes were still low, not while I was already stressed out in my first year of high school or university.

So, my mom claimed once and then adamantly denied every time I asked her about it later, they signed me up for swimming lessons.

I was a terrible swimmer. I remember being twice the size of the other kids in my class; my third-grade friends had swum all the way to their Blue or Grey badges while I was stuck taking Red for the second time. Eventually, the swimming instructor told my mom to give me a break from the badge lessons and try an alternate program — I might just need to grow a bit, physically, before I was ready.

Even if Mom now insists she totally signed me up because she wanted me to know how to swim and never said anything about me succeeding too easily at other things, the experience of failure and challenge was a valuable one. I’ve brought it forward with me to my current athletic activities.

I know I’m not good at sports, but as long as everyone else is okay with that, I’m willing to try out most things. Out of the population, I guess I’m above average at floor hockey, but certainly not compared to other people who actually play. But I’m still on two recreational teams. Softball? I am terrible. Volleyball? Hadn’t played since mandatory elementary-school gym class when I joined my department’s intramural team in grad school. Running? Climbing? Acrobatics? Although I’ve done all those things in lessons or with friends, I’m definitely just a novice who has to work hard to learn the basics.

But I’m not afraid of looking silly or unskilled. I don’t mind being the worst at something and having to work hard at it — at least, not when it’s something physical.

See, sports don’t matter to me all that much. They’re fun, and I like them, but I haven’t incorporated them into my self-identity the way I have, say, writing. Or academics.

Grad school was the first time I encountered feeling like a failure at something I thought I was good at. I know now that’s a pretty common feeling, but at the time, it was intimidating.

In undergrad, I was often around the top of the class academically. I knew how to write papers and solve math problems; at the end of my degree, I came in second in the faculty for overall GPA, behind only someone in Economics, a less qualitative field than Drama. So being good at school was something I’d incorporated into my self-image.

But in grad school, I’d joined a department outside my original field of study, and I felt like everyone else already knew the key knowledge. Anything I said might expose my only-recent-speed-reading introduction to fundamental theorists like Kuhn and Latour, or my ignorance of basic events in the history of science. When I spoke to my classmates, it was clear they had intense passion about this field and academia in general that I couldn’t find in myself.

The failures I could laugh off in sports resonated more in academics. It was more difficult to learn to cope with appearing bad at something that was supposed to be part of who I was.

The same goes for writing: since part of my self-image is Sarah The Writer, whenever I write something not great or, let’s face it, completely terrible, I feel like my self-knowledge comes uncoupled. What if everyone thinks I’m a horrible writer now that I posted that awful blog entry? What if I send something to an agent or editor, and they know for sure I’m a deluded amateur, and then everyone else in the publishing industry knows it too?

Those are the fears that lead me to hesitate over my first drafts, worried that someone will read the bad plot twists, out-of-character reactions, and tired phrasing. Those are what leads to writer’s block: conviction that I simply cannot move past this scene unless I have the perfect ending in mind.

But perfect words (and even imperfect words that are still good) take time and thought. If I waited for inspiration to strike–to be certain each blog entry is perfect–to read and digest every single thing I could possibly need to know in a new academic field–until I knew I wouldn’t embarrass myself by missing an easy pass–I’d never progress at all.

In addition to swimming lessons, my parents also sent my sister and me to learn to skate. I don’t remember very much about those lessons, except that figure skates pinched my toes, and I hated that. But I recall our very first lesson: the instructor made us all sit down on the ice, as though we’d fallen, and then taught us how to get back up.

I’m still not so great at lots of things, including skating. Some are more important things than others. But I’ll be okay as long as I remind myself that I know how to get back up–and that the only way not to fall is not to try.