The TED Talk I chose was called, “The Unexpected Benefit of Celebrating Failure” delivered by Astro Teller. In process of elimination of which TED Talk best appeals to me, I found this topic very relevant to me. Recently, in a particular grade 12 course, I have lost hopes and gave up my willingness to persevere for better results because my grade dropped drastically after two evaluations. Basically, I stopped caring enough for that specific course just because of two failures. And I find that every other grade twelve is currently facing the very exact situation. So, I decided to watch this talk to change my perception of failure.
In this TED Talk, the speaker concluded by saying, “You cannot yell at people and force them to fail fast”. I wholly agree with this because this makes people inherently uncomfortable as the speaker mentioned. People worry of the negative response they might receive from their peers and colleagues. People tend to think of what others might think of them or that it may change their perception of them. And failure is a large source of demoralization which is why people apt to think that they will be mocked for it. The exact fear is present in students especially at Mackenzie and more particularly in grade twelves. We are scared to fail because if we fail we are aware of the terrifying consequences which include not being accepted into universities, being held back from your friends and being the spotlight of attention which causes embarrassment. However, I found inspiration and encouragement to persevere after the speaker emphasized, “The only way of getting people to work on big risky things, audacious ideas, and have them run it all the hardest parts of the problem first is if you make that the path of least resistance”. He further explains that the path of least resistance is where we can compete to see who is better at failing and whoever it may be receives rewards, even promotions. This idea completely enlightened me, which after giving some thought made complete sense. If failure is perceived as success, as an accomplishment, people won’t fear to fail. Instead, they will work harder to strive because after all failures, comes success. People give up efforts after each failure as they see no meaning but if they receive rewards for each failure, the amounts of failures will decrease and give success. The ultimate purpose is to embrace failures, which leads to success because resistance to fail is resistance to succeed. In the beginning, the speaker mentions how the balance between enthusiastic skepticism and optimism is required to accomplish any great dream. While this may be true for the large, time consuming projects that big companies executes, it is untrue for great dreams whose target is not billions of people. For instance, if someone decided to become a foster parent I would define that as a great dream. And this great dream does not require skepticism, or any logical reflections of how to nurture a child. Nurturing a child simply takes love and dedication to grow them into a capable adult. Such dreams to come true does not require one to devise a plan and create strategies; it’s simply done through love, care and most importantly passion. This talk made me reflect on my future by motivating me to live up to the situations and embracing failures. Embrace failures is crucial because they exist everywhere in every aspect of life, as without it success wouldn’t exist. It emphasizes on how failures shape our lives and showcase who we are. This motivational talk actually inspired me to work harder towards my goal which is to enter the health sciences, a very competitive and well reputed programme. The fact that failures lead to success allows me gather my willingness power once again and push myself through the hurdles and overcome each of them. Once the hurdles are crossed diligently, the success after it will follow. In other words, this talk changed my perception of failures entirely where instead of being depressed about the failures achieved; it enables me to acknowledge them for teaching a lesson and move forward. With this optimism, the failures will motivate me to remain focused and work harder to achieve better results and eventually to success. Yes, I would recommend this talk to a friend because there are so many individuals from youth to grown adults who fear from failures. Due to failures many of these individuals will not attempt to pursue any thing they might desire. Failure has become their barrier, and to break the wall of failure this talk emphasizes why it is important to embrace failure and be optimistic about it achieve success. Sometimes, it gets overwhelming to listen to facts, but this talk is filled with several personal stories to reconnect with and better understand the eminence of befriending failure.
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For the PEDS project, there wasn’t a significant aspect in which I was assigned to do and be responsible for it because majority of the onside work was done collectively since this project was assigned. For instance, the initial surveys were done in pairs, where I worked with a partner to complete it. When creating the Poll Everywhere edition of the powerpoint lesson, we all contributed to the questions equally. We all collaboratively worked on the final survey made for students to determine based on their opinions whether or not this project was successful. However, I did feel that my contribution to this project did not match to those from my group. This is because I wasn’t always included in their conversations and decisions made for this project. It was a bit unfair. The first time when we were responsible to go afterschool to communicate with the teacher and layout our project, a few members including myself were not able to come for some reasons. So, we concluded that any two people should go, and communicate with the teacher to introduce this project and our plans. Hence, only two people went.
Overtime, this became a major barrier of communication within our group. Just because I couldn’t commit myself to the meetings the first time, I was not notified for the future ones as they had already planned. I was unaware of many of these meetings which were the most important part of this project in order for it to bring successful results. In addition to that, they did not update me with any new plans they had planned with the teacher, instead I was blamed sometimes for not being involved enough. Furthermore, the day on which the in-class lesson was organized to teach the class the lesson using Poll Everywhere, was the day that I was absent due to a field trip. This was the significant element of this project and I missed it, which is also why I feel that my contributions too little. Moreover, sometimes a couple members were unwilling to do the tasks and finish things up. They lacked motivation and did not put enough efforts. Personally, I never lacked willingness to get tasks done especially for this project, meaning Biology was not an issue for this project. It was because this project was flexible and since every part that I contributed to was collaboratively done, it was all finished during class and consumed less time. For these reasons, I was not able to contribute much and this is why I believe our PEDs project was unsuccessful. All in all, the major issue was the gap of communication in our group (between a group of grade elevens and one grade twelve). As I mentioned before, the biggest cause of this unsuccessful project was the lack of communication (at least on my side it was). So, if I had to change anything, I’d make sure I talk to my group members firmly and discuss with them our next steps properly and also ensure that the meetings with the teacher is not just with two people, but with all members. This way, the issue of communication will be eliminated within the group as well as with the teacher. Transparency would solve a chunk of the issues that I believe caused this project to be unsuccessful. Another minor thing I would change about this project is organizing more in-class lessons with the teacher because we in fact only had one meeting where we received the chance to teach the class a lesson. Having more of the in-class sessions would mean that we have more data and more data is better when drawing conclusions. I feel that with only one lesson done in class, the results cannot be conclusive enough to confirm whether this PED is a success or not. One suggestion I would give is that maybe have the teacher organize these groups instead of creating our own that way no distractions can distract the friends and let them off-track. What I discovered while working with my group is that when friends go with friends they are more likely to get themselves hooked to something and go on a completely different track. They tend to distract themselves in useless talks and not get the work completed in time. So, having the teacher to organize the teams would be suitable and beneficial to the students because they are forced to work with each other and contribute so that if one does not, they are being covered-up by their friend. |
AuthorA grade 12, who is always mistaken as a niner. Archives
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