Thank goodness I wasn’t in school for the staff meeting because I don’t want to be called out to receive my awards. I was at the headquarters of the Ministry of Education, attending a seminar which comprised talks by one student dancer and three accomplished dancers.

Yes, I’m the teacher in charge of the Dance Club. Go figure.

Anyway, there was the typical Q-and-A session at the end. And to make my time worthwhile, I eagerly volunteered to be the first teacher to ask a question. So my question was this: how do you ladies regard failure? Is failure in your vocabulary or do you reframe it as something else?

The three accomplished dancers gave me different answers. The first one spoke about how she grew fond of failures because without making mistakes and taking small steps, you wouldn’t know how to be great. The other two said something to the tune of thinking of failure as a learning experience. Which I think is the prevailing paradigm of today’s times.

Other than that, I had a great time picking up words like conditioning, periodisation and mind-to-body connection, you know, basically stuff that would help me accentuate my wisdom in front of impressionable teenagers.