Reflections from a Steirischer Wiener Schnitzel on ”fail, fail again, fail better!”
Come2Graz, 2016
There is something bewildering about menus abroad: the words are familiar, but the visuals — what appears on your plate — are quite often a real “eye-opener”. Ordering is a kind of surrendering, letting go, accepting it’s out of your control.
And in this state of mind I found myself sitting on sunny Lendplatz browsing through the menu while munching on what I’d learnt from the courageous Phst-students. Our encounters had been exhiliarating: “failures”, many surprising responses and some very good ideas. I really needed to write it down!
So when the waiter arrived I knew more about what should be in the article than what could be on my plate. I just went for the ugly duckling on the menu:
“ein Steirischer Wiener Schnitzel, bitte”.
It proved to be a bit of a tongue-twister though — who the Higgins invented this mouth acrobacy, I wonder — and the waiter looked ever so slightly worried. So I quickly made it …worse:
”Ich spreche kein Deutsch. Zu schwierig.”
“Das ist ok. Langsam geht auch”.
It was said in a friendly way.
The first liminal lab is about introducing entrepreneurship in its broad sense (Unternehmungsgeist apparently) in education. The power of failure is its focal point.
“The beauty of this session is that when you fail you actually succeed!”
The students didn’t believe me.
“To fail is more difficult because it challenges your creativity!”
Some frowns emerged. So I asked a non-suspecting student to give a wrong answer:
“What is the capital of Belgium?”
“Graz?”
There is something funny with this concept of failure. In education it is to be avoided at all cost but in entrepreneurship it is the road to success and innovation. In formal education it leads to bad marks, having to take exams again, even flunking, possibly having to give up your dreams for the future. In entrepreneurship, however, it is the path of creativity, seeking opportunities, finding new links, connecting to other experts, developing grit and finding better solutions.
How do you connect these different mindsets, build bridges between the Wiener and the Steirischer Schnitzels so to speak?
How do you avoid antagonism, make sure the Wiener Schnitzel doesn’t start prancing, showing off its thinly crumbled skin, making the Steirischer one want to hide its pumpkin-seeded coating?
In L33N we think through stories and liminality.
We use stories and liminality to shed the outer layers of differences, to cut through the veal if you want.
Stories posed no difficulties. The students quite fluently selected a story, fact-checked on the Internet (loved it! taking initiative, finding resources!) and actually did a great job linking entrepreneurship to the characters and their actions.
Liminality, however, proved to be more of a challenge. I found myself ill-equipped. I referred to rituals they were not familiar with (baptisms in youth movements and student fraternities) or “only vaguely” (marriage?). I could have used a “learning snack” (this is how we call the very short L33n knowledge clips) on liminality and especially on this first phase of unlearning, letting go of old habits, making the familiar unfamiliar.
I then moved on to the digital story “Instructions” by Neil Gaiman. I only showed it once. Then I expected the students to link it to liminal characters, places and processes. Just like that! And the poor “chappies” and “chappettes” actually embraced this challenge! Full marks for perseverence, coping with ambiguity and risks, self-awareness, self-efficacy and learning by doing for all students! I especially liked this challenger who kept asking questions right from the very beginning: “I haven’t got a clue about what entrepreneurship means!”.He helped me “defreeze” our group. And I certainly admired this very honest student who had the courage to try and express her unease at Gaiman’s instructions of pre-liminality. It allowed us to explore why people resist innovations and why you need liminality and stories to try out new things without commitment.
On retrospect I think I was too “fast and furious” to just explain the concept of liminality, show the digital story once and then ask them to link the two to entrepreneurship in “five minutes!” I should have shown two learning snacks: one explaining the in-betweenness of liminality and one illustrating how fairytales create liminal characters, spaces and processes to inspire entrepreneurship.
One of the fairytales they’d chosen was Frau Holle. I was not familiar with it. And frankly I was quite shocked to hear this story about the ugly, lazy girl sent home all covered in tar. But in a flash I saw this link with our second liminal lab ‘can do the impossible’, about determination and liminal figures and fan fiction! What a moment!
There were more things I discovered that will help L33n develop the project. For the radio interview I was challenged, quite innocently of course, to talk about a failure of mine. And while I was quickly flipping through my private encyclopaedia (“no”, “no”, “definitely not”, “no”…) I realised I selected a failure (writing but not publishing) I’d already kind of turned into a window of opportunity. Then I couldn’t help but notice that the next interviewee continued with a sigh of relief “ oh, I’ve already published…” So this made me make a mental note about two learning snacks we should design: one about contexts of failures and another one about how to respond when somebody shares a failure.
As I was reflecting on how very much I like this teaching as discovering together, experimenting, leaving room for the unexpected, my “zwei Steirischer Wiener Schnitzels” (quite easy to write actually!) had arrived. They looked rather proud, I must confess. I felt rather intimidated. It seemed to me, the Steirischer Schnitzels did not look down on the Wiener one, for being out of place or in the wrong community. On the contrary I could have sworn they used their pumpkin seeds to gradually inform the Wiener Schnitzel it has been relocated.
“Mahlzeit!”
Yep, that’s the description.
Author: Patricia Huion, educational entrepreneur and coordinator of LEEN (Liminality & Educational Entrepreneurship)
Our webpage: l33n.eu
The LEEN project is funded by the ERASMUS+ (Agreement No. : 2015–1-BEO2-KA2O1-O12334).
