S01E01: A Great Teacher, Failure Is – Dr. Lisa C. Freeman
Joining host Kristin Brynteson today on her quest to explore failure is NIU president, Dr. Lisa C. Freeman.
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KB: Failure. We all do it, but none of us like to talk about it. Failure’s hard to deal with. It can be painful. It can be embarrassing. Admitting we failed is like admitting we are the failure. In reality, that's not true. A wise teacher once told me “The greatest teacher, failure is.” Okay, that wise teacher was Yoda, and he didn't directly tell it to me. He told it to Luke, but I still heard it. Either way, our favorite grammatically challenged jedi makes a good point: failure is a teacher. Through failure we learn and grow. I’m Kristin Brynteson, and you're listening to the Failure Bites podcast, where successful people tell bite-sized stories of failure, growth and success. Today, we are honored to talk with Dr. Lisa C. Freeman, president of Northern Illinois University. Dr. Freeman is an accomplished academic and respected leader.
LF: So, I started veterinary college the same time that I started a master's degree that had a heavy field research component. I knew coming out of my senior year undergrad as the result of a very strong undergraduate research experience that I wanted to combine my professional training with additional graduate training. And I was very enthusiastic about doing that, but I was pursuing that opportunity at an institution which at that time had no pathway to facilitate that for students, and I just assumed that I would be able to persevere regardless.
The veterinary school curriculum was very rigorous and very time-consuming, and I really struggled to manage my research time. My research lab was... Maybe contemptuous is not too strong a word of the fact that I also wanted a professional degree, that a graduate degree wasn't kind of good enough for me, so there was a lot of pressure not to ask for help in meeting some of my research goals. I became overwhelmed, and as a result, my academic performance in vet school slipped to the point where I was close to being academically dismissed from veterinary school. Fortunately, I was able to pull it together and rally and recover and then ask for help. And the lesson I think that I learned from my failure in the situation, although ultimately I didn't do the big fail of flunking out of vet school, I failed because I didn't get as much out of the curriculum as I could have. I didn't capitalize on the opportunity that I had. I also let a number of people down because I couldn't do anything well because I was trying to do too much, and I failed because I looked at asking for help as a sign of failure when asking for help is actually a sign of strength.
The ability to acknowledge that you're not a super person, a superhero, a superwoman, a superman, that there is no shame in saying I can't do everything myself and I need some assistance and support to accomplish my goals and I think I learned that the hard way in the situation but I think it was a very important lesson.
KB: You just heard NIU president Dr. Lisa C. Freeman. Her tale of failure might sound familiar. We all tend to overextend ourselves, set high—maybe even unrealistic—expectations, and then don't reach out for help when we need it. Luke did not defeat the Empire all by himself. He used his resources. He asked for help from his friends and tapped into the wisdom of some really smart ghost jedis. If you feel like failure’s looming, save yourselves and possibly the Galaxy by reaching out for help. I'm Kristin Brynteson, and this was Failure Bites. Leave a review and subscribe for more. If you don't know how, we'll be happy to help. This podcast was produced by NIU STEAM at Northern Illinois University. Your future, our focus.