Author: errell_2007

contributed by Dr. Zak Cohen In 2009, President Obama spoke to a group of students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. As someone who had readily and unabashedly admitted to his mistakes as a youth and how these missteps informed the adult he had become, he humbly but stridently impressed upon his audience the importance of learning from one’s mistakes. “You can’t let your failures define you—you have to let them teach you” (Obama, 2009). Anyone listening to this speech would invariably nod along to President Obama’s rhetoric. However, these knowing nods mask the long, complex relationship mistake-making has…