Failing Forward

Blog: March 17th 2026 – First Week Honors Seminar

7,500. That’s roughly the amount of students studying at the THA. And while the subjects we study and our personal backgrounds might vary, we still succeed in finding common grounds. Some things might be obvious, such as sharing the same facilities and being taught by the same professors. But others are not as visible, almost shunned from open discussion. Not many people enjoy talking openly about their personal struggle, especially regarding failure. The topic of failure makes us feel all sorts of emotions and sometimes even leads to isolation.

While other classes and seminars focus on teaching the skills required for finding a job in the aligning fields, this seminar is literally built different. During the following weeks we will answer the following questions:

What happens, if more than 40 people from various faculties, backgrounds and interests gather and start an open discussion around the topic of “Failure”? How can our own coping with failure evolve when, instead of trying to deal with it by ourselves, we open up a space, build a community and highlight different ways to use our “failure” in order to “fail forward”, leveling up as individuals in our common goal and motto at this university: Becoming sought after personalities.

In order to get to know each other everyone lined up and just like speed-dating, changed partners after each question. The questions ranged from generic terms like: “What do you study/teach” to “What have you not done because you were afraid of failing?”

Who are We?

Roughly 40 Students and 14 lecturers, from all across the THA, coming together to start viewing failure as an opportunity instead of a hardship which has to be avoided at all times.

The seminar brings together outstanding students and professors from across disciplines for weekly interactive, discussion-based sessions in English. This year’s topic being: Failing Forward: The Power of Mistakes.

The Power of Mistakes:
How can we give something primarily viewed
as negative, a positive spin?

Everyone makes mistakes, but the way we interpret and deal with them differs. This became very clear as soon as Alisa Kasle-Henke, (Lecturer in the ZSI and the Business School and the Organizer of the Honors Seminar) gave us the task to write down personal failures on post-its and share them within our assigned groups. Some mistakes like “failing an exam” were something almost every student can resonate with. Others like “Letting my wife buy a dog” however had a personal touch that required further explanation. Especially with dog lovers like Alisa present!
When all the “failure accounts” were gathered into a “mistakes mural” on the white boards, neatly organized under categories, one thing became very clear: Failure is universal. Everyone has experienced it at some point.

Just as Henry Ford once said: “One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.”

Fear….

“What’s your biggest fear?” A very personal question that has only been answered honestly in our youth. But what about now? While still relevant, people are afraid to answer openly. It seems to be a general phenomena within our society, which leads to isolation. We asked ourselves: “What is my biggest fear?”

For Mary, (one of the authors of this week’s blog) right now, it is that her Japanese language proficiency is insufficient for her planned internship in Japan. For Vitas, (the other author of this week) it is being unable to accomplish his tasks with decent quality and losing face.

And what about you?

We’d like to add to this train of thought by declaring that no one has to struggle alone. During this seminar we will make space for open discussions and experiences surrounding the topic of failure and how it can help us not only to improve ourselves but help others grow in the process too.

What better place to keep this discussion rolling on than here, down below in the comment section. So feel free to leave a comment with your personal failures and thoughts down below.

Authors: Mary Corso, Vitas Ruhland

Musik: Alex-Production Pixabay: Jazz Lounge