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The Fringe Benefit Of Failure Analysis

Decent Essays

In 2008, author J.K. Rowling wrote and gave a commencement speech to the graduating class of Harvard University. Rowling aptly named the speech “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”. In this speech Rowling tries to convey the message that failing can be beneficial or an individual and that people should not be afraid to use their imagination. Rowling begins the speech with a reflection on what went through her mind while writing the speech and how the process affected her. During this time Rowling asked herself what she wished she had known at her graduation and came up with the two main ideas of this speech; the merits of failure and significance of imagination. Rowling explains the benefits of failure by using her own personal failure of living in poverty with her daughter and what that failure taught her. For the significance of imagination, Rowling describes it not in terms of how it helped her out of poverty, but of how it opens up people to the world and other individuals around them.
During the speech Rowling states “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default”. This quote means that in life a person needs to be able to make mistakes in order to learn from them and grow. By making mistakes an individual can discover aspects about their character that they did not know before. Failure can teach one lessons such as

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