Failure essay too trivial?

[thebadge]

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Hi all,

I'm trying to answer 'Discuss a time you failed, and what you learned from it'. I'm hopeful this answer isn't academic focused, but it is a club.

In my second year of college, I founded a club fighting food insecurity, and really tried to cultivate interest in our exec board, so it would extend past my time. While we had interested members, at the end of the year, we had zero exec board applications. I had to re-evaluate how I was running and letting members get involved as they current approach wouldn't last after I was gone. I realized I had to make more opportunities for members throughout the year to get involved, so they could have some 'stake' instead of just doing everything myself.

Anyone have advice on if this is too silly of an answer? Thanks!

 

[LizzyM]

Write it more clearly. You might say, "....while we had interested members, I failed to attract any applicants for service on the executive board. Without a plan to pass the baton to others, the club was not likely to outlast my time on campus. This failure caused me to reflect on what I had been doing that could have been done differently, specifically, I learned that....."

The way you've written it, I was not sure what your failure was and what you learned.

 

[karaya]

I can't lie, when I ask this question in interviews, I'm looking for a bit higher stakes. Usually people talk about academic failures. I've been most impressed by scenarios involving professional failures.

 

[MD_Maker]

Totally fine to write about volunteer or professional experiences, I did in my own application many years ago. But I don't love when the adversity is just "this experience was hard" or "the demand was high" or "no one cared but me." Are there other elements of your experience that you can zoom in on? Why did it matter to you, what did you do, and how did it impact you?

 

[thebadge]

The way you've written it, I was not sure what your failure was and what you learned.

Got it!

In my mind, my failure was not including members enough and overmanaging our activities. I'd give them pretty small, short goals like reaching out to family for fundraising, but they didn't have any actual involvement in planning activities or direction, which I think dissuaded anyone from wanting to do more. To give members ownership of the direction of the organization, I organized ‘mini missions’ across broad areas of improvement: community connections, personal fundraising, and consistent donations. Members split into teams, chose a focus, and worked under our guidance for a semester. It was incredibly successful in reaching these goals and we had multiple applications of people wanting to stay/get more involved. I learned about how to lead and knowing when to allow space for others to work

Does this answer your question a little bit better?

 

[thebadge]

I can't lie, when I ask this question in interviews, I'm looking for a bit higher stakes. Usually people talk about academic failures. I've been most impressed by scenarios involving professional failures.

I was worried about doing a professional failure in case it looks poor, but I do have one. As a CNA, I failed to perform bathing rounds on all my patients. it was a busy day, and I didn't communicate well with the nursing team that I was running behind because I was trying to do everything myself. it led to the patient's nurse having to quickly perform a bath (as required every day).

I can expand a lot on what I learned from this (communicating more effectively, planning better), but I'm not sure if it's great to talk about a time that I failed to provide patient care. Do you have any recommendations from previous interviews?

 

[karaya]

I was worried about doing a professional failure in case it looks poor, but I do have one. As a CNA, I failed to perform bathing rounds on all my patients. it was a busy day, and I didn't communicate well with the nursing team that I was running behind because I was trying to do everything myself. it led to the patient's nurse having to quickly perform a bath (as required every day).

I can expand a lot on what I learned from this (communicating more effectively, planning better), but I'm not sure if it's great to talk about a time that I failed to provide patient care. Do you have any recommendations from previous interviews?

In my application I wrote about the time I caused a BiPAP pt to desat to 60. Everyone screws up eventually--it's all about how you respond. Are you gonna bounce back?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hi all,

I'm trying to answer 'Discuss a time you failed, and what you learned from it'. I'm hopeful this answer isn't academic focused, but it is a club.

In my second year of college, I founded a club fighting food insecurity, and really tried to cultivate interest in our exec board, so it would extend past my time. While we had interested members, at the end of the year, we had zero exec board applications. I had to re-evaluate how I was running and letting members get involved as they current approach wouldn't last after I was gone. I realized I had to make more opportunities for members throughout the year to get involved, so they could have some 'stake' instead of just doing everything myself.

Anyone have advice on if this is too silly of an answer? Thanks!

So no one else cared as much as you did, or no one else wanted to be a leader of THIS club?

So yes, it's a failure of your leadership and inability to grow your club to help you share the burden of running the club. Granted, if no one decides they want to run it, it's not your fault. Let the club die; that happens to a ton of student-run clubs. Yours will not be the first.

I don't see any actions you took when you noticed no one applied for the board. I presume you didn't wake up the day of the deadline to see your empty mailbox. You did nothing to encourage people to be leaders, even during the activities you had planned?

Good example, but the execution needs a lot more work/reflection aside from wishful thinking. As written, it sounds like the problem was you not having anyone step up to be part of the executive board, but you could focus your essay on your overall failure to get others excited about your cause (in the form of the club).

 

[LizzyM]

What I was trying to say is sometimes you need to guide the reader for the reader to be able to see what you have identified as the failure (starting a sentence with "I failed") and what you learned ("I learned....") if that is the prompt. We are reading a few hundred applications each and it helps to be very concrete in answering the prompt. You can go from there but be sure to say "i failed to..." and "I learned that..." Don't feel that you have to turn the failure into a success story. The reader may be looking to see how you manage emotionally when faced with failure or how you are willing to take responsibility and make a self-assessment of what went wrong.

 

[Goro]

I can't lie, when I ask this question in interviews, I'm looking for a bit higher stakes. Usually people talk about academic failures. I've been most impressed by scenarios involving professional failures.

Yeah, I dislike the academic failure deal. Makes it appear that people's whole lives revolve around academics.