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Surprising Descriptions

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Kaylin Stravalli

In the past 6 months, I’ve had a number of people describe me in ways I had never thought of myself. Each time it happened it was in the most casual of manners, just a thought or observation thrown into the flow of conversation and just as quickly gone. Each time it happened I was just as caught off guard as the time before it (and the picture above is a time someone said something surprising and funny to me and my facial response was caught on camera, I added here to provide you with an idea of what I looked like when I heard what these lovely people had to say about me).

It got me thinking and I realized that this is one of the beauties of having people in our lives. No matter how long they stay or how quickly the pass through, for that length of time they can and will provide insight into ourselves. An odd concept, isn’t it? That someone else can make us realize things about ourselves that we’d never thought of or spent too much time considering? However odd it may be, though, it happens. Take my experience for example, if you can’t think of your own off the top of your head: These people were able to (in individual conversations, so it’s not like this was one random event) allow me to see myself how they see me. I must say, it’s an unique experience because, for the most part, I tend to have an idea of how other people see me, yet these people managed to surprise me, shock me even.

They described me as selfless, kindhearted, logical, good at giving advice, extroverted, and a better person than [whoever said it]. I can say that “logical” made sense to me and “good at giving advice” wasn’t out of the question since people tend to ask it of me and do so more than once, but the rest of these descriptions? I never would have even ventured to describe myself as such. For instance, in one of those ice breaker games that we are inevitably forced to participate in at some point in our lives, if someone had instructed me to, “Describe yourself in a word or a short phrase,” the descriptions that came to my mind (strong-minded, loyal, brutally honest) would have taken me down a long list before reaching these surprising descriptions of myself – if ever – which is why they took me by such surprise. But to know that these people in my life, who mean so much to me, think of me in such positive ways gives me hope and comfort that maybe they can see things about me that I don’t or can’t always see in myself and that maybe I’m doing a better job at being a better person than I’d thought. Either way, these were some of the best compliments I have ever received and mean even more to me than they’ll ever know.

Now, I urge you to think to yourself about a time when someone described you in a surprising manner, in a way that made you go “hmmm” and see yourself in a different light. Perhaps it will give you a much needed confidence boost or learn something about yourself you never knew or maybe it will just give you another attribute to use in those god-awful ice breakers.

Quality of Failure

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Kaylin Stravalli

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.