Fall 2012 I spent a semester in grad school at Eastern Illinois University where I met and had class with Dr. Terri Fredrick. Since then, I have worked on a project with her and a few of my classmates and she has become Terri to me. This post is not about how I came to know Terri; about our project, or about how I left grad school (well kind of but roll with me for a bit before that comes up again). It’s about the most valuable lesson I learned from her and how it carried over into my life.

Terri introduced to our class an element of our final grade that I had never heard of before and was instantly intrigued by. She called it “quality of failure.” She encouraged us to take risks with our writing, to think outside the box, and to be creative and to fail – at least in her class where it was safe to do so. If things didn’t turn out exactly or even remotely close to what we’d imagined, hoped, and planned, well, that was okay because that 5% safety net of encouragement and freedom to fail was there for us. It wouldn’t break our grade or our confidence to “fail” at something we were experimenting with.

The concept was taken on by each of my fellow classmates with a range of enthusiasm and willingness to step outside our training to “give the teacher what he or she wants” to get the desired “A” on our work. I have to admit I didn’t jump into it with as much as enthusiasm as I would have liked to or would now given the chance. However, I have carried this concept over into my personal life and made up for lost time by taking risks and giving myself the freedom to fail. Of course, no one is grading me on how well I live my life or how badly I tank when following an idea or a dream, but it has opened my eyes to seeing failure in a different light.

Just because something doesn’t turn out the way we’d imagined, hoped, or planned doesn’t mean it was all for naught. In fact, I would argue that some of the most valuable lessons learned come from our biggest failures – that is, if we’ve done some quality failing and are able to see the forest through the trees when it seems that nothing is working out.

Take, for instance, my semester in grad school. (Told you I’d get to it.) Notice I said semester. A. Singular. One. That’s because that is all it took for me to realize that the path of a traditional scholar was not the path for me. No, I didn’t fail out. My grades were just fine. I passed. I did well. I could have kept going. I could have completed the two-year program on a full ride scholarship and gotten my master’s in Literature with an emphasis on Creative Writing, sure. Would I have thrived? No. I found out that going forward with my original plan to graduate college early, get my master’s, go on for my PhD, and become a college professor was not going to make me happy or fulfill me the way I had once thought. My original plan was a failure in the sense that I only accomplished about a fourth of it. Was it a mistake to go to grad school? No. Was it a mistake to leave? Some might think so, but I don’t. I made the best decision for me at both points and accepted the saying about “best laid plans” as the gospel truth.

Like I said, I’m sure there are those people who thought, still think, or will think after reading this that I failed in some way by making the decision I did to leave grad school and was/am crazy to do so given the opportunity I’d been granted. That’s okay. I chalk it up to “quality of failure.” I was willing to leave the comfort and safety of a two-year master’s program to “wallow in ambiguity,” as my classmates, Terri, and me came to call the times when we trudge our way through a bunch of not knowing to a solid conclusion.

The point is – we have to be willing to take a risk or two (like I mentioned in my last post Eyes Wide Open), to fall on our faces, and then dust ourselves off and try again, to fail sometimes in order to gain anything. We may not gain what we’d intended and it may not be obvious to anyone from the outside looking in, but I guarantee you we will have gained something out of what we failed at or lost.

Perspective. Self-respect. Freedom. Confidence (odd but it happens). Answers. Adventures. Opportunities. And quite possibly could have saved ourselves from a lot of regrets.

Whatever it may be it will have been worth the failure because we will have learned and gained things we never would have without that experience. Who knows how that will help us in the future? It could make us a better person, more empathetic, more compassionate. It could help someone else. It could land us a job. It could pay off in any number of unexpected ways.

But – and this is a big but – if we don’t put ourselves out there, if we don’t risk failing at anything, if we aren’t willing to wallow in ambiguity for even just a little while, if we never take into account the quality of our failure, of the positive things that are gleaned from the negative – we will remain stagnant. Unmoved. Unmotivated. We won’t learn anything and will have closed ourselves off to and missed so many opportunities to grow and not even realize it.

That’s no way to live. Not to really live. So I challenge you:

Take a risk. Assess your quality of failure. Wallow in ambiguity. And reap the benefits you never knew you didn’t have.