{"id":6622,"date":"2013-09-18T21:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T04:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alannarisse.com\/blog\/?p=6622"},"modified":"2013-09-18T21:54:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-19T04:54:39","slug":"failure-as-an-objective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/failure-as-an-objective\/","title":{"rendered":"Failure as an Objective"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was wrapping up my weekly meeting with my mentor, ampoule<\/a> as she was stepping out the door, pharmacy<\/a> she said to me something to the effect of \u201cGrad school is a great place to fail.\u201d She was reiterating something I\u2019ve been thinking about and need to remind myself about every week so I don\u2019t get too confused or stifled by my own self-imposed pressure. There is a strong urge to try and make really compelling, smart contemplative work in grad school. But I have to remember that this is also a time of experimentation and that there is a likelyhood that I may make nothing but flops here in grad school. The production is not important, it\u2019s the discovery that matters.<\/p>\n

She also said I was in a weird sort of protective bubble, and that my mentors and teachers want to see me fail\u2026 and it sounds terrible when I say it like that, but what she meant, and what I want to believe is that I should not be afraid to fail. That I should be trying to find all the edges, and probably fall off a few of them in the process. There are people around me who are waiting with open arms to scoop me back up and try to set me in the right trajectory again.<\/p>\n

I love grad school.<\/p>\n

I kind of feel like gushing about how much I love my program right now\u2026 but I haven\u2019t yet made it through a single critique this fall, so maybe I\u2019ll just wait and see what abuse they have for me :).<\/p>\n

I do very much feel like I\u2019m circling something. The thing is right there in front of me, but it\u2019s a sort of amorphous blob. I can make out some of the details but as soon as I get a grasp on it, the features change and morph. I\u2019m hesitant to dive in. I don\u2019t know where to start. I want to make a million things at once, because I have a bit of a fear that any one object will too strongly influence the next. I wish a whole pile of ideas could be born simultaneously so I could lay them all out in front of me and try to make some connections. Then and only then do I dare start reducing things down to their essence.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just talking out my ass right now.<\/p>\n

make. stuff.<\/p>\n

Talk, research, watch, cogitate, regurgitate, negotiate, contemplate, but make sure to make stuff. Also, take a shower.<\/p>\n

Try all the angles, fall off, fall in, get back up, try some more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was wrapping up my weekly meeting with my mentor, ampoule as she was stepping out the door, pharmacy she said to me something to the effect of \u201cGrad school is a great place to fail.\u201d She was reiterating something I\u2019ve been thinking about and need to remind myself about every week so I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6622"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6626,"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6622\/revisions\/6626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alannarisse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}