While striving for success, Zach knows that he will sometimes fail — and that process teaches sometimes teaches him more than just getting it right the first time.
I like to try to be open to new things and try to be flexible. When things happen that you never really planned on, it’s important to go with the flow. You can’t learn without failing. I think that’s important in every aspect of life and just for living in general. In school you fail, you study more, and then you don’t fail the next time. Your failure ends up helping you get a better grade. When I fail, I try to look over my mistakes, identify what I did wrong, and then try it differently the next time. I’m on a ski racing team. During a race one time I missed a gate, which means I went the wrong way. You bet that the next time I went through the next race that I was way more aware of where I was going and I definitely went the right way!
Even here at EXPLO there were times where I would try an experiment or develop a code and they would fail. I learned how to work through those failures and collaborate with other people to make it better. I think EXPLO is the best environment to fail in that I have ever been in. No one is going to criticize you for failure here. They almost encourage it because they want you to try something on your own and discover things in your own way — regardless of whether they think you’ll succeed at the end. Your instructors really just want you to keep learning and keep improving. They help you learn from your mistakes and turn those mistakes into new ideas.
Ally Marcino