Failure is What You Make of It

If you’re anything like me, you’re downright mortified by your failures.

You don’t just fear failure – it becomes physically debilitating. You’ll fight it off at any cost.

But there’s another side to failure, beyond that part that makes you sick and stresses you out. Failure, surprisingly, is almost always helpful to you.

And I don’t mean that it teaches you what you aren’t good at, makes you stronger, wiser, or anything like that – though those things are all true.

I mean that failure teaches you what you’re capable of, and gives you personal strength to keep pushing – if you respond to it properly.

I’ve got two stories below to illustrate this for you.

I Bombed an Hour Long Interview

A few years ago I had just broken into working on games, but I was also at a career dead-end. I was part of localization – a support service team. The job wasn’t bad, but I wanted to be on the main development team and had no avenue to do that.

During my time there was when I really started embracing the “technical” parts of audio design and development. I was beginning to carve out the niche I have in my career and website today, and a few people locally were beginning to understand what I was getting fairly good at.

I applied for a technical role at a very large company here in Seattle, and was granted a phone interview. I could not have been more excited – I knew my interviewer, and the upside to getting employed was huge. I was nervous with excitement, but in my head I knew I was capable of performing well.

That all changed when the interview happened.

To this day I’ll tell you that I’m no sound designer. I’m capable, but I’m not good in my mind. I doubt I would ever pass a sound design test, and I’m not particularly interested in finding out one way or the other. The interview immediately started with sound design questions involving software, plugins, and gear.

I’ve been working in audio for over a decade – I knew the answer to these questions, but in the moment they were so unexpected that I locked up. I didn’t have answers to extremely simple audio questions.

I was beyond embarrassed.

The interview kept going for an hour. We both knew that I had bombed within the first five minutes. The rest of the time was just for courtesy.

Afterwards – I was scared to take phone interviews. I was convinced my audio and games careers were done. I assumed I’d have to go get a “real job” – and I was even hired for one!

But, that’s not where my story ended.

I Almost Dropped Out of College

Freshman year, I was a computer science major. What’s funny is that I wanted to work in Web Design. While that’s a big career now, at the time (Facebook didn’t exist yet) there weren’t really any schools that “taught” this.

Therefore, computer science was the closest thing we knew to enroll me in.

So, I started writing Java programs. I learned a lot about Linux and writing very simple programs. I suddenly had an amazing, potentially very well paying career ahead of me.

That was, until I didn’t.

In college, I learned that programming is more of an art than many developers will often admit or agree to. I had two professors teaching my entry-level courses – both of whom taught us to program very differently. One of the teachers wanted us to use the most modern techniques and libraries – the other wanted us to do the exact opposite.

What school taught me at that point was that I needed tailor my homework to specific teachers. Until, they started sharing grading tasks – grading each other’s assignments to save time.

Between that, and the likelihood that I wasn’t at all a good developer (I couldn’t wait until we were going to talk about the web – which I don’t even know if they ever got to it), I failed out of computer science.

I effectively had two options – repeat the year again, or drop out of school.

Finding Another Way

What I’ve learned from failure in life is that failure is what you make of it. Failing doesn’t mean your life is over, you’re done for, and everything you’ve ever worked for is ruined.

It largely just means that the door to the avenue that you were pursuing is now closed.

It doesn’t always mean there isn’t another avenue. Often, you weren’t even looking and didn’t know a better option was just around the corner.

After failing the big interview, I could’ve concluded that I’ll never work in games or audio again. As I said – I even interviewed and agreed to take on a new job completely outside of both disciplines!

But, I couldn’t keep away from looking for other opportunities – and literally weeks later was hired at 343 Industries (and yes, I was panicked to get on that phone interview).

When I failed out of computer science – that was more of a blessing than I ever could’ve conceived. An opportunity to join the theatre department was availed to me, where I began my audio career, and I graduated on time. I’ve since been able to keep up programming as an additional interest which augmented my career – but I’m not sure I’d ever really enjoy being a full time developer employed by a tech company.

These stories don’t simply stop with me either.

I know developers who have had unfortunate endings with longtime employers who were sure their careers were over – whom are now flourishing in better places.

I’ve known designers who were kicked off or let go from projects, who (after being rightfully upset) found new projects that were much more creatively and monetarily fulfilling.

In fact – I have no doubt you can look back on your experience and see situations like this too.

Your failures tend to be formative – good and bad. But that, is entirely what you make of them.