Word: failed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hasty Pudding Theatricals. But just as empowering as those victories have been our defeats. Those strangers who arrived here four years ago were not likely to have faced failure–hence they were enrolling at Harvard. During our time here, however, we have had to learn to fail the hard way. Perhaps it was a newspaper “turkey shoot” election, perhaps sports tryouts, maybe a laundry list of academic honors, or even just being turned down for lunch at Adams House...
...currently occupies all headlines, it becomes clear that recognizing and facing our shortcomings is necessary medicine for our social ailments, as is coming to terms with our inability to accurately predict what is to come. We cannot foretell the changing tides of Heraclitus’ river. Yet learning to fail inherently means learning to curb our hubris—and that is a lesson of personal growth I hope each of us takes through the gates...
...unanswered questions of where, to whom, and to which causes we shall devote our lives, let us leave today with a promise: to remain true to an ever-changing path, yet always armed with Harvard’s lesson of how to succeed–and also how to fail...
...Summers told us shortly after resigning that we should never ask what we are against; we should define ourselves by what we are for and do our best to make a difference. One cannot really fail by being against an opinion or a policy: it just means living in a state of perpetual disagreement with the external world. Failure is possible when we are for something, and that’s what we should choose to do in the years ahead...
...ability to meet deadlines in the first place. I am not arguing for a greater degree of paternalism on the part of the University, but rather that expectations should not be so flexible with the bar being lowered on a case-by-case basis. Another area in which Harvard fails to teach more important lessons is in the area of criticism. There are far too many teaching fellows and professors who fail to criticize students when they make mistakes. It would be entirely possible to go through a course, especially a larger course in the Core, and make completely inane...