In a commentary entitled "Doing is the Key to Learning," physicist Frank Wilczek reflects on learning, writing that "[t]he fear of making mistakes is a great barrier to creativity. But if you're ready to learn from them, mistakes can be your friends. As I have often advised students, 'If you don't make mistakes, you're not working on hard enough problems–and that's a big mistake.'" "Wilczek's Universe," Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2017, p. C4.
You see, sometimes we are too afraid to learn…because…we are too afraid to make mistakes.
But, there is NO learning without mistakes. That's particularly true at this stage of the semester when final exams still seem so far away. So, rather than trying practice problems or meeting with others to discuss hypotheticals, we avoid practicing exam hypotheticals because we often don't feel like we are ready to practice…because we don't feel like we know enough yet to take a try at problem-solving.
That's the BIGGEST mistake of all because learning is hard. Practice is hard. It involves trial and error (and even lots of trials and lots of errors!). In the process, we find out what we know (and what we don't really know). It involves making lots of mistakes before we start seeing any great successes at all in our problem-solving abilities. And, let's be frank: That is just downright humbling. It's frustrating. It's embarrassing. So, we avoid practicing because we want to avoid making mistakes.
So, here's the key:
To REALLY learn, embrace mistakes as golden opportunities for growth. Grab hold of them. Relish in them. Bask in your mistakes because without mistakes you really aren't learning…for it is in the process of making mistakes that you are teaching yourself things that you could have never learned through reading, or taking copious notes, or watching others solve legal problems. In short, the key to learning in law school "is all in the doing" of law school. So, be bold, take a risk, hang it all out by being a law school problem-solver "doer!" Oh, and don't forget, your professors became experts at problem-solving…because THEY MADE THE SAME MISTAKES THAT YOU WILL MAKE TOO. (Scott Johns)
