A professor shows its human to fail

There is a latin quote meaning; Cuiusvis hominis est errare, in english this means ( “Anyone can err.” )

But in my native tongue it translates to;" Its human to fail "

A Pinceton professor published a CV of his past failures online, professor of psychology and public affairs Johannes Haushofer wrote his 'CV of Failures' a few years ago for his students, but last week decided to put the document online in the hopes of making a broader audience realise that we all experience failure on the way to success.


And the last statement he did was;

This darn CV of failures has received way more attention than my entire body of academic work

"Rather than interpreting the struggles of some of humanity’s greatest minds as proof that a regular person has no chance, at the end of the six-week experiment, the students who learned of the scientists' struggles ended up outperforming the group that learned only of their achievements ... Amazingly, the control group actually ended up doing worse than before they participated in the experiment. '[T]he students who learned only about the scientists’ achievements performed worse. They believed the scientists were innately gifted - unlike themselves,'

Link to article

a reply to: PanPiper

That's the problem of giving everyone a trophy.

No one ever gets to learn the lessons that come with failure.

a reply to: PanPiper
Someone's head, at the University's Human Resources Dept., is going to roll.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Aaaw, you too? You never had a trophy, right?

a reply to: donktheclown

I fail more before 9 am then most people do all day.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: donktheclown

I fail more before 9 am then most people do all day.

That takes determination and hard work.
You're our boy!

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: donktheclown

I fail more before 9 am then most people do all day.

So really.... you are succeeding at failing?

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OT - I think this is awesome. I read the title of this thread and thought... I am going to be pissed if the government paid billions of dollars to prove that it was indeed human to fail. Thankfully my blood pressure didn't go up.

I think it's good to show his students that nobody succeeds without failing. We are teaching our children that everyone is a winner all the time when that is the furthest thing from the truth.

Thumbs up from me for this professor for not acting like he just coasted through life a born winner!

a reply to: DBCowboy

No one ever gets to learn the lessons that come with failure

You pretty much hit the nail on the head...I can already think of an example where the whole,everyone's a "winner" mentality actually incentivizes laziness and failure respectively.

I used to do cross country running from grade school to high school. I recall that every year since they implemented giving everyone a participation ribbon,runners were getting less competitive,more apathetic to improving their athletic abilities. I couldn't blame them,when you lose or fail to succeed it gives you the opportunity to reflect and learn where you messed up. Overall there is higher probability you will improve in where you failed.

By believing one is successful for simply participating,is delusional. You take away from people the process to effectively learn from their mistakes.
Also,to see the years of tempering your craft or ability and to watch the results of it lead to success,is the most incredible feeling. Unfortunately meritocracy means nothing anymore...It's the one thing I hate about egalitarianism.

a reply to: NateTheAnimator

Where i live, you should have failed so many times that you should realize before you are twenty a team is the only way to succeed in life.. We do have a problem with always having a board meeting on every decision.

I almost killed myself and others almost killed me so many times that the fail astounds me and all of humanity is rife with it.

What are we all doing about that? Secret meetings?

a reply to: PanPiper

IMO failure is a part of learning, and you got to learn to succed. We need to see both sides of the coin, to know what it is worth
So is it human to fail? No, dont think so, its just a part of life and not only humans does it

a reply to: DBCowboy


C'mon, man.
Cheer up, pal. Every failure is a step towards success.

originally posted by: donktheclown
a reply to: DBCowboy


C'mon, man.
Cheer up, pal. Every failure is a step towards success.

Failure is a result of trying. If I never try, then I'll never fail. My successes are incredible and epic also. But for anyone to say that they have one without the other is dishonest.

I'm not ashamed or even embarrassed by any of my failures simply because I was able to learn from them.




It's cool.

"So I have just one wish for you--the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom."

I love this post, OP. It's the first one you've made that isn't super creepy, lol.

"If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all." - said Michelangelo, once.

Love that guy.

I think that some people get these dangerous ideas that certain people are "gifted" or whatever and it's alienating and it can even lead to conspiracies about these certain individuals being witches, or aliens, or possessed and having sold their soul to the devil in exchange for apparently extraordinary talents... and that's scary and wrong.

Like the evolution of biology, the evolution of human depends on trial and error

a reply to: geezlouise

Its the gift of knowing

I think this guy showed the opposite. I don't know about the rest of you, but my list of failures in just the past 10 years is much longer than the list of failures from this guys entire life.

His premise is that to do great things you'll have some missteps along the way, but that's not where others fail. Just speaking for myself, I fail at the basics. I've been told that this is because I compare my failures to other people when they're at their best... but I don't believe it because at the end of the day, they get much more done than me.

originally posted by: geezlouise
I think that some people get these dangerous ideas that certain people are "gifted" or whatever and it's alienating and it can even lead to conspiracies about these certain individuals being witches, or aliens, or possessed and having sold their soul to the devil in exchange for apparently extraordinary talents... and that's scary and wrong.

I don't know about getting talent supernaturally, but there are a lot of gifted people out there. I'm in rooms full of them every day where I am by a very large margin the stupidest person in the room. Some people really are innately gifted. They can be exposed to something new and have a complete understanding of it in moments.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
Failure is a result of trying. If I never try, then I'll never fail. My successes are incredible and epic also. But for anyone to say that they have one without the other is dishonest.

I'm not ashamed or even embarrassed by any of my failures simply because I was able to learn from them.

It's cool.

If you fail, then you aren't succeeding either. If you grasp the theory correctly, you should never fail.