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SoC First Year Seminar: Interdisciplinary Topics in Communication Arts & Sciences (101-0-3)

Topic

#fail

Instructors

Catherine Carrigan

Jeremy Birnholtz

Meeting Info

Willard Hall B72: Wed 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class


Success and achievement get all the glory (especially at a place like Northwestern), but failure can be far more valuable, when it's done right. Fear of failure can stop us from taking important risks, whereas lessons from failure can lead to even better decisions. But even though failure is all around us, acknowledging it in ourselves can be difficult, painful and embarrassing. To learn from failure, then, we need tools for understanding and examining it candidly. This course uses different disciplinary approaches to explore the concept of failure. We will familiarize students with failure not only as an option, but perhaps a vital step in the processes of learning and creation.

Registration Requirements

Enrollment is restricted to SoC undergraduate first year students.

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this course, students should be able to:
1. Understand the social, disciplinary and cultural context of expectations for success and failure in generative contexts, and be able to distinguish between useful and futile opportunities for failure (i.e., understand how to successfully fail)
2. Articulate and apply models of failure to real-world situations, drawing on diverse disciplinary and cultural perspectives.
3. Demonstrate the ability to constructively communicate, engage and collaborate with intellectually and culturally diverse teams, and appreciate the perspectives that each person brings to the table.
4. Articulate and understand the value of failure, and detail specific ways in which it might benefit their own and others' academic and professional careers.

Class Materials (Required)

Edmonson, A.C. (2023). Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. Simon & Schuster ($29)

Class Attributes

SOC First-Year Seminar