来源：《自然》
原文刊登日期：2023年6月30日
Aerospace researcher Gladys Chepkirui Ngetich had earned a coveted spot in the 2019 cohort of the Schmidt Science Fellows postdoctoral programme after finishing her PhD in engineering science at the University of Oxford, UK. The programme encourages postdocs to step outside their comfort zone and into a new area of research. Although she was excited about it, Ngetich remembers a nagging worry, “What if I fail? What if I can’t write a research paper in two years?”
航空航天研究员Ngetich在英国牛津大学完成工程科学博士学位后，在2019年施密特科学研究员博士后项目中获得了令人垂涎的名额。该项目鼓励博士后走出舒适区，进入新的研究领域。尽管她对此感到兴奋，但Ngetich记得一个挥之不去的担忧，“如果我失败了怎么办？如果两年后我不能写一篇研究论文怎么办？”
Shortly afterwards, she was surprised by a call from the programme’s executive director, Megan Kenna. “I have a personal phone call with every fellow right after they win,” says Kenna. “And the first thing I tell them is that I expect them to fail.” There was no pressure to publish anything. For Ngetich, “It was liberating,” she recalls.
不久之后，项目执行总监梅根·凯纳打来的电话让她大吃一惊。凯纳说：“在每个人赢得机会后，我都会和他们打私人电话。我告诉他们的第一件事是，我预计他们会失败。”没有发表任何东西的压力。对Ngetich来说，“这是一种解放，”她回忆道。
That attitude is part of the zeitgeist of the programme, which consciously addresses the worry about failure by baking into its curriculum the need to fail, how to prepare for it and how to learn from it, according to Kenna. Why do postdocs need to fail? “We are trying to help scientists do science differently, to really tackle the big challenges that the world faces,” says Kenna. “And doing that means that they’re going to have to fail many times before they find a positive result.”
凯纳表示，这种态度是该项目时代精神的一部分，该项目有意识地解决了对失败的担忧，将失败的必要性、如何为失败做准备以及如何从中吸取教训融入课程中。为什么博士后需要失败？凯纳说：“我们正在努力帮助科学家以不同的方式进行科学研究，以真正应对世界面临的巨大挑战。这样做意味着他们必须失败很多次才能找到积极的结果。”
Conference programmes are also addressing the need to acknowledge failure as part of the scientific career journey. Mohammad Rezaei, a member and former chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association’s Austrian Chapter, organized a conference in 2019 called the Failed and Bored Conference in Austria. Presenters talked about their own failures, how to cope with them and the benefits of failing. Rezaei recalls one participant who said that she used to view failure as a weakness or a sign of incompetence, but the conference convinced her it was a normal part of life.
会议项目也在解决承认失败的必要性，将其作为科学职业旅程的一部分。穆罕默德·雷扎伊是居里夫人校友会奥地利分会的成员和前主席，他于2019年在奥地利组织了一次名为“失败和无聊”的会议。演讲者谈论了他们自己的失败，如何应对失败以及失败的好处。雷扎伊回忆起一位与会者说，她曾经认为失败是一种弱点或无能的标志，但会议使她相信这是生活中正常的一部分。
The Schmidt fellowships, other postdoc programmes and workshops in the United States and elsewhere are now explicitly incorporating training for mentors and advisers in how to talk about failure, as well as offering workshops that are built around the dip into disappointment and the ascent out of it.
施密特奖学金、美国和其他地方的其他博士后项目和研讨会，现在都明确纳入了对导师和顾问的培训，教他们如何谈论失败，同时也提供了围绕陷入失望和走出失望的研讨会。
The Schmidt programme, for example, runs a session on perseverance, risk and failure. For a discussion on how embracing failure is necessary for success, attendees start by reading a poem by Portia Nelson entitled Autobiography in Five Chapters. In it, the author repeatedly walks down a street, falls into a deep hole and feels helplessness. The poem traces the author’s incremental acceptance of her role in falling into the hole and how falling in becomes a habit, which eventually leads her to emerge from the hole more quickly and find another street that’s hole free. The takeaway, says Kenna, who co-created the workshop, is that “failure is that learning process, and the real failure is not learning from our experiences”.
例如，施密特项目就开办了一次关于毅力、风险和失败的会议。在讨论“接受失败是成功的必要条件”时，与会者首先朗读了波西亚·纳尔逊的一首诗，题为《五章自传》。在诗中，作者反复走在街上，掉进一个很深的洞里，感到无助。这首诗记述了作者如何逐渐接受她掉进洞里的角色，以及掉进洞里如何成为一种习惯，最终使她更快地从洞里出来，找到另一条没有洞的道路。凯纳是这个研讨会的创始人之一，他总结道：“失败是一个学习的过程，而真正的失败是不从我们的经历中学习”。