21A- Reading Reflection No. 2

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams

1)    What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The general theme of the book is correlated between making mistakes and learning from them. The book argues that making mistakes is inevitable when it comes to the path of becoming successful, and that these mistakes can be used as a stepping stone to learn from your decisions and grow as an individual. Overall, the book emphasized to not be afraid of making mistakes and failing at times, because they are necessary to inhibit growth and future success.

2)    How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

I can relate this book to ENT 3003, by relating it to attempting to complete these assignments. For some of the assignments listed they were pretty difficult to understand how to actually complete them and there were no assignment examples, so in the beginning of the course I just had to do my best to complete the assignment according to how I interpreted its tasks. Also, relating to a specific assignment the elevator pitch, we are given 3 separate assignments for each elevator pitch and the purpose of the assignments are to learn from our 1^st pitch, and that helped me do better for the 2^nd second pitch, and then I can apply the mistakes and critiques I got for my first two pitches, and apply that to my 3^rd elevator pitch to create the most successful elevator pitch possible.

3)    If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

For my exercise, I would have each individual write their top 3 mistakes/failures in their lifetime. And under each one, I would have them describe what they learned from that mistake and how that mistake/failure could be used to benefit their future.

4)    What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

The most I can relate reading this book to an “aha” moment, is the fact that I spend a lot of time feeling dissatisfied when making a mistake, and even work overly hard on myself to prevent a mistake from happening. But as this book explains, mistakes are inevitable and they are the key stones to growth, so I realized that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself if I do make a mistake because that’s the only way I’m going to learn and grow as an individual.