First, the failure
Every semester I tell my students the same thing: “I want you to fail.” Then I explain that I don’t mean that I want them to always fail. What I hope is that they will try things they don’t know how to do, things they might not have any idea how to accomplish. If they do that, they are pretty much guaranteed to not always succeed. But they will learn how to accept and deal with things going wrong. This is an important skill. Things always go wrong, and failure is normal. And they’ll learn some things that don’t work, so the next time they try to do a similar project they’ll already have made progress toward the solution.
Another thing: my students often get frustrated when things don’t work and abandon projects without turning in their attempts. I always tell them to turn in their challenging projects, even if they are incomplete. The failures are important. Something that a student labored over and could not get to work is much more impressive than something a student knocked out without a struggle.
Now I’m staring at a personal failure. Even worse: because the challenge goes until June 30th, t won’t officially be a failure for three weeks. I technically could still do the final 1400 or so miles, if I rode around 65 miles a day, every day until the end of the month.
That’s not going to happen.
So: failure is coming. What am I learning? What benefits were there? What skills did I get for other projects?
I learned that I can raise money for a good cause, a valuable skill. I learned that if I set a goal for a project I should build in more time to work on it than I think I’ll need to complete it. I definitely got better at riding, particularly hills. And I reconfirmed my knowledge that people are awesome. My failure is the foundation of my next success.
Man, I’m deep.
Now, the donuts…
Donut Time was the location of Tangerine, a film by Sean Baker. It was shot completely on iPhones. It received a ton of awards and nominations. I’ve never watched it, and I’m not sure why. Baker’s follow-up, The Florida Project, was probably my favorite film of 2017.
I never had a donut from Donut Time, and I’ve never had one from Magee’s. I’ve had Trejo’s, but it was near closing time when I went and the donuts weren’t fresh, so I can’t accurately judge them.
…and the ice cream
I’m not surprised that I couldn’t get ice cream at the drive through. Most places won’t serve a bike, even though they’ll serve a motorcycle. However, I was a bit surprised that I could bring my bike into the store, even though it’s no dirtier than walking. I’m guessing if it had been crowded I would have had more resistance, but there were only two other people in the giant store.
That particular store is the one closest to Baskin-Robbin’s corporate office, so it’s bigger and fancier than most shops. It also gets fun promotions. A couple of years ago, it was turned into Scoops Ahoy as a Stranger Things promotion.
Great. Now I want MORE ice cream.