Water was right at the edge of the boat. Another second, another misstep, and I and my entire team of four rowers were going swimming. My first time on the water with teammates and a coach I’d never met before that day, and my worst fear was about to come true — I was going to screw up and fail in front of all these strangers.

Fall down seven times and get up eight. Failure isn’t a failure until you stop trying to succeed. I didn’t know what rowing was until my mom’s friend told her about it. Then my mom told me I should try it, so I did. I showed up to my first training not knowing anyone and not knowing what to expect. I was still excited to try it. When I got on the water, I made many mistakes, but eventually, I learned and got better. This involved failing many times and learning from those failures to do better next time.

As the boat tipped really close to capsizing, I started panicking and almost flipped it. My oar shot up into the air, and I couldn’t move it because the flat side was buried deep in the water. I almost flipped the whole boat. But with help from my teammates, I was able to fix it before the boat flipped. My face burned with embarrassment.

“Relax,” the voice behind me said.
“Feather your oar,” he explained.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and quit fighting my oar, feathering it.
“See?”
“Yeah.”
I settled back in my seat.
“Thanks”
“Always make sure your oars are feathered.”
I felt relieved that nobody made fun of me and instead just helped me.
After that I realized that there was no way to automatically be good at something.
And it occurred to me that I was going to have to fail and fail often to get better.
I wasn’t discouraged by this, and it just served as a realization that this was going to take practice.

Trying – you never know what you’re good at unless you try. Rowing changed how I thought about trying. I was a little bit afraid of trying because I was afraid of failing in front of everyone — which is exactly what happened.

When I first started rowing, I did not know anything about it. I was scared on my first practice. I was afraid that I would flip the boat or do something embarrassing, especially since I did not know anything beforehand.

Many times, when someone makes a mistake, they are afraid that their failure will last for a long time. In reality, it doesn’t last for long, and fixing it takes even less time. It’s like when a waiter at a restaurant drops something. Everyone looks for less than a second and then gets back to what they were doing. They don’t dwell on it. Or when a teacher makes a mistake in a presentation that they were teaching, they go back quickly and fix it and then keep moving and forget it even happened.

I was also embarrassed to admit these mistakes. That stopped me from being able to learn from them. My teammates were very helpful and always willing to help teach me not to make certain mistakes anymore.

The first time that I caught a crab, it was extremely stressful. Nobody had told me about them and how you fix them.

“Pulling a crab” means getting your oar stuck in the water to the point where it can flip the entire boat, throwing you and your teammates into the water and making for a cold and aggravating recovery experience. It’s a lot like failing in public.

We’re all different ages, from freshmen to seniors. Some are really good at rowing, the seniors are more experienced. There’s also a difference in strength and coordination. I saw my teammates around the boathouse but didn’t know them. I’m the only one from my school, so I don’t get to hang out with other guys. I don’t need to hang out with them because we hang out at practice.

My older teammates are probably more social than the younger ones. I think its because they aren’t as worried about their own mistakes.

Eventually, the coach helped me fix the crab and improve my stroke. Then we went back to rowing, but I was still stressed about what to do if I caught another crab. While I was trying to fix the crab, I didn’t know what to do to fix it, so I just started moving the oar around, which only made the boat close to flipping and caused me to panic even more.

First, with any kind of failure, there’s the awareness – that it’s too late to change or stop it, but you realize just in time to realize you’re about to fail. The only thing left is to let it happen and then figure out how to fix it.

I had no idea what was happening when the oar dipped down into the water. I didn’t really know until it was over. I didn’t feel any fear until the boat started to tip over, and everything I was doing was making it worse. That’s when I really got scared. The river was flowing, and nothing was going to wait for me to figure out how to fix it. At that point, the teammate behind me showed me how to fix it. He was a lot more experienced than me, so he was pretty calm.

The boat never actually flipped. As time went on, I realized the more I focused on my mistakes, the harder it was to learn from them. The longer I stayed focusing on a mistake the longer it took to move past it.

My biggest fear — looking foolish — became one of my most important and valuable lessons. I learned if you are always worried about messing up in front of people then you will never be