By Kyla Thomas — 

On Wednesday, Oct. 10, the College of Business held a seminar called, “Faceplant into Failure.” While some might cringe in slight pain when thinking about the thought of failure, speaker Elizabeth Liebschutz-Roettger explained how failure is actually a great thing.

“I’ve had this presentation brewing in the back of my head for a while. I really wanted to explain that leadership has a lot of different meanings. It looks different,” Liebschutz-Roettger said.

She said if you don’t fail, you don’t try, which is worse than failing in the first place. Liebschutz-Roettger recounted a speech given by the keynote speaker at her college graduation with the motif: “Don’t be complacent in life.”

“Sometimes just the fear of failure makes us complacent. That’s why I really want to address this. Since I turned 22, I constantly try to remind myself that, but I also think that the fear of failure, and that falling into and accepting it, helps you avoid that complacency,” Liebschutz-Roettger said.

At the end of the seminar, Liebschutz-Roettger read from a children’s book based on the 1950’s iconic poster “Rosie the Riveter.”

In it, a child fails at building an airplane, but the child’s family embraces her because she at least tried.

Students were engaged in the seminar, and U of L student Victoria Johnson said it’s comforting to know others fail too.

“I feel like the seminar really put things into perspective. As a college student we are bound to fail from time to time and to hear from an adult and several examples that sometimes failure is okay, makes things a little bit easier,” Johnson said.

Featured Image: “Rosie the Riveter”

Photo Courtesy / Wikimedia