2 April 2019

Failure


Don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them - Jackson Browne

It didn't work did it? For weeks, I had been planning my cunning April Fool's blogpost, hoping to catch out a  legion of bloggers and other visitors. The mass humiliation would have been exquisite and I could have basked in the glorious amusement of my trickery for many days. But it didn't happen. I hate to admit it but I am an April Fool failure. Boo hoo!

I have experienced a fair amount of failure in my life. I guess that most people can say that - perhaps including you dear reader. Most of the time, people tend to keep quiet about their failures, preferring to showcase their achievements and promote a positive image of themselves. But inside ourselves we will often mull over past failures. That kind of thinking tends to be lonely and unheard.

Work. That's a fertile zone for feelings of failure.

It's close to ten years since I gave up my teaching career and took early retirement. At that time I was The Head of English in a challenging secondary school. I had been in that same role since 1995 - almost fifteen years in total. With regular inspections, lesson observations, unrealistic expectations and initiative after new initiative being churned out in some distant governmental initiative factory, I had become tired of the whole shebang. I was working sixty hours a week and my weekends and holidays were never free. There was always something in my black school bag - just waiting to be done.

The school's manic headteacher was happy to climb aboard every new bandwagon that came along. But ultimately she was one of those leaders who can talk the talk without walking the walk. "Hypocrite" and "windbag" are labels that would have sat well with her. She did not have my respect and she was definitely a factor in my choice to leave early. I had simply had enough of it.

Turn the clock back even further to 1991. I was Second in English in the same school but I was looking to get out. I applied for six head of department positions in other parts of Yorkshire. Scarborough was especially attractive to me.

I would spend ages on my job applications, honing the language, researching the school, identifying priorities. Out of the six applications I made, I was invited to five interviews, two of them in Scarborough. I would polish my shoes and put on my best suit.

The interview days were gruelling. It was almost as if you were being interviewed to be the next Secretary General of The United Nations. The verdict was usually given after five o'clock in the evening and to put it bluntly -  five times I failed.

It left me wondering what was wrong with me. What was I lacking? I had an excellent c.v., I was super-dedicated and passionate about my work. I was articulate and resilient. In the end, I think they were sometimes suspicious of me. They wondered if I was a team player. In appointing me, perhaps they would be bringing a rebel into their midst.

Maybe they could tell that in my heart of hearts I really wanted to be a poet, a rock star, an artist - not the leader of English in an obscure school far from anywhere. The same treadmill firing up every September. Familiar faces, familiar problems.

I came close to getting The Head of English role at Scalby School - the best state secondary school in Scarborough. After the interview process, the headteacher took me aside and apologised saying that it had been touch and go between me and the winning candidate who had been their Second in English for five years. He wished me well.

The next day, with a degree of reluctance, I agreed to be promoted to the role of Head of English in my Sheffield school and that's where I stayed. But I always regretted the fact that I was unable to make the leap to a different, less challenging school - taking my young family to another life in a different part of Yorkshire.

I have known other failures unconnected with work but I will keep them to myself. Fortunately, I am able to keep my failures in perspective. They don't overwhelm me or hang about in the forefront of my mind. I guess it is part of the human condition to endure failure but in these increasingly brash modern times it has become almost taboo to admit to our failings. As a Judy Garland song from long ago went, "Keep your sunny side up!" because nobody wants to know about the other stuff.

23 comments:

  1. Sorry to disappoint you with yesterday's post. I am not usually a failure at being duped, given my previous history, but, as you say, nobody wants to know about all that stuff!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought you might be gullible but clearly I was wrong.

      Delete
    2. Oh, gee, thanks ???

      Delete
  2. Well, I may not have fallen for your prank, but I went to work and promptly fell prey to a joke the principal had arranged! He set up a microphone next to the computer we scan our IDs to clock in with printed instructions to clock in with our new "voice activated" system. "State your name and the time clearly into the microphone"....and since the whole system had been updated recently anyway almost everyone fell for it! Mr. Oates was sitting in his office watching the whole thing on the office camera as teacher after teacher came in and tried to clock in that way! Haha.

    As to failures...I've had my share. It's part of the human condition I suppose.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What a great trick Mr Oates played! In a healthy workplace there should be mischief and laughter sometimes.

      Delete
  3. Yeah Pudding! It was pathetic!
    No one should ever feel a failure in job interviews, especially not when you are so close. Having sat on both sides of the table, as I'm sure you have too, candidates never ever know the real criteria, the ones that go unsaid. Some of the discussions I've been a party to (often unwilling) have bordered on illegality.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hated those debriefing discussions after interviews. They were a joke and a bad one at that.

      Delete
  4. My teaching story is so much like yours it’s incredible and by the time I left I felt like I was failing the students by failing to educate them in the manner I was always proud of in the past. Shame, cos once I loved it and felt good at it .
    I am not failing at enjoying my retirement though !

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I also find I am successful at retirement and do not regret for one minute leaving the maze at 56.

      Delete
  5. Am I all alone in thinking that hearing about how fellow humans have tried and not succeeded is actually far more interesting than hearing about the eternal sunny-side-ups? And "failure" is a horrible word. It's quite limiting in description. With every one of those interviews you learned something new- even if it was that perhaps you didn't really fit in to one of those slots. And my Lord, man! You kept putting on that suit and updating your CV and getting out there! That's not failure. That's determination. And I respect you for that. You kept doing what you needed to do for yourself and for your family and along the way I'm sure you helped out quite a few students.
    And now here you are- hopefully enjoying the fruits of your labors while you're still young and hale enough to do so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I lifted hundreds of students but the quality of those daily educative interactions didn't seem to be of much import on the career ladder. Thank you for your wise reflections Ms Moon.

      Delete
  6. Failure is not something I like to dwell on but it has always made me more determined to succeed. There is quite often something to be learnt from it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are so right. We have to learn to use failure like steps on a ladder - helping us to climb higher.

      Delete
  7. Everything Ms Moon said. (She does have a way with words!)

    Plus, given my husband's experiences with work (I have little of my own to offer), we have found that most places don't want an independent thinker. Their loss, but it's maddeningly frustrating. And we have stayed in the same town long enough to see his predictions coming true and suggestions being adopted years after he tried to get people's attention -- and left when they fell on deaf ears.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most workplaces want their employees to behave like sheep. They pay lip service to notions of creative or independent thinking but mostly they want to hear this: Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa!

      Delete
  8. As you say, everyone has their share of failures. To err or fail is human. But looking on the sunny side, you are now out of the rat race and you seem to be enjoying a lovely retirement, going where the wind blows you. My husband Greg was unhappy in his job towards the end. Always being slapped down by senior management or fighting deadlines. By the time of his early retirement, which he so yearned for, he was so down, he took to drink and you know the rest. Some people cope better with failure than others.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is a crying shame that alcohol chewed him up when he had such a lovely wife and an equally lovely daughter to share his life with. Poor Greg. Gone before his time.

      Delete
  9. Yesterday's post was no failure! Maybe some of us were simply "going with the flow" and possibly remembering a little yellow Maserati! Seriously though, I think I do understand the feeling you are speaking about here but I don't think it is failure. You seem to be quite a successful person and you have many accomplishments of which to be proud. When I think about my last few years of work and how I retired a few years earlier than I had originally planned I get a bad ache in the pit of my stomach. I think that is because I always had this certain vision of how things would be and it did not work out that way. I think I disappointed others and myself by leaving early. But you said it yourself when you said "I had simply had enough of it." I was the same way and I know in my heart I did the right thing to leave when I did even though I felt a lot of guilt over not following my plan more closely. But situations and people can change to a point where the only healthy thing to do is to get out of it. I see it as a failure to stay in an unhealthy situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is a very good point Bonnie. Having the guts to leave at the right point should be seen as a kind of success. Hanging on and on and feeling miserable is really a kind of failure.

      Delete
  10. You had ambition and yet were not able to use your talents. Who said hiring was remotely fair. I think every staff needs a good rebel. A few times my Principal had to say "We will have to disagree my friend" That was the signal for me to leave and that he had listened to me long enough. Keep on being a rebel. Sorry about your failure yesterday.

    ReplyDelete
  11. It's interesting reading about your career track. It's always hard to make the jump from one organization, where you're well known and respected, to another where you're an unknown quantity. I could never do it either. I stayed pretty much within one company my whole professional career (before coming to London) -- though I did get to move a few times and ascend the corporate ladder. I hate interviews. I always get a bit inwardly indignant that I'm being made to jump through hoops and polish myself up for presentation and approval!

    ReplyDelete

Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

Most Visits