Nate Kreuter at insidehighered.com
Some of the columns that I write here at Inside Higher Ed arise from a really basic formula. It goes something like this: I make a mistake at work. I realize my error, or am compelled by another party to realize it, and I take corrective action. Then I write a column addressing the mistake in general terms, in hopes of perhaps removing a little of the trial and error from this whole higher education gig for a reader or two. Somewhat less frequently I simply observe the mistake of another and then write a column. I probably couldn’t keep up with this column without the steady stream of mistakes I make myself. Maybe my mistakes are job security of a strange sort.
I probably could even use this venue to make a public promise regarding my mistakes to my colleagues in my department, college, university, and across my discipline. Here goes: I promise you all that I’ll screw up again one day. I don’t know exactly how and I don’t know exactly when, but I promise to bungle something. Maybe just in a small way. Maybe in a big way. Who knows?
But here’s what I also promise: I promise to own up to whatever mistakes I make as soon as I recognize them, to do everything in my power to correct them, and to do my damnedest not to repeat them. This is, I think and I hope, what it means to be a good colleague. I certainly would not ask a colleague for more, but I also expect no less.
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When I began my graduate studies, I naively and idealistically thought of academe as a particularly enlightened institution. It isn’t. I doubt that we treat each other much better, though hopefully no worse, than people treat each other in most other professional communities. But a little more humility about our mistakes and a little more generosity in offering our help sure would go a long way toward improving life in the academy. For everyone.
And by all means, avoid the passive voice. Someone dodging responsibility says, “Mistakes were made.” Someone taking responsibility says, “I made a mistake.”
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2013/05/15/essay-importance-admitting-when-you-mess#ixzz2UPPyfzKJ
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