The Importance of Failing
My name is Ella Colarossi. I am a senior in Advertising: Art Direction student at Temple University. I have been working as a Digital Marketing intern at Nolia Roots, located in Media, PA.
I am not perfect. I wish I was. I am human and therefore, unfortunately I make mistakes. The thing to remember is that everyone else is human and also makes mistakes. When you are starting at a new job you feel like you cannot make mistakes or fail in any way because it feels like no one else is. I constantly put so much pressure on myself to be perfect that I forget that I am allowed to not know how to do something or that I am allowed to do something wrong if I don’t know any different. I feel as if no one can know I made a mistake because then they might question whether or not I should be there. And the thing is even if I mess up, I still deserve to be there.
Working at Nolia Roots made me truly embrace this mindset. Shelly Hughes, the founder and CEO, makes sure that all of her employees know they are allowed to mess up as long as they own up to it. At the beginning of each week, we share our biggest brag from the week before and our biggest epic failure. The person with the biggest epic failure, wins $5 to get a little treat. This is to recognize that no one is alone in making mistakes. We should be celebrating our mistakes because we are learning from them, not hiding them away. I won’t lie, this concept was extremely uncomfortable for me (and still doesn’t feel great a couple months in). However, it forces me to recognize my needed areas of growth in my work.
It might be scary to start a new internship or job while in college because you constantly feel like you have no idea what is going on, on top of all of the schoolwork you already have. What I think more students need to realize is that no one has any idea what is going on most of the time. Becoming comfortable in the fact that you will not be amazing on the first try is what will really change your outlook on yourself. You will learn, you will fail, you will succeed. Failure is just a part of learning. Failing to recognize that is what will hold you back from becoming truly successful.
