It’s time to redefine the meaning of the word “failure.” On the road to invention, failures are just problems that have yet to be solved.

Social Media Revolution 2010:

A Vision of Students Today

This is Taylor Mali, a teacher and slam poet. You can visit his website here.

Dear Students,

I don’t know where the world finds you now. I’ve been teaching just long enough that you are now scattered about the Earth, engaging in what I can only hope are memorable and amazing shenanigans although I’ve been around long enough to know that’s wishful thinking.

Life has a funny way of knocking us all around so I won’t idealize.

Please see the rest of my letter to you here.

If you haven’t watched this, I encourage you to do so:

So it seemed worthwhile to repost…and add a little extra for you.

First, the original story.

In 2004, I applied for a job as the guy in charge of building the Web operation at MIT’s Technology Review, the oldest technology magazine in the country. Two things made this appealing:

1. I’m a student of technology history and MIT is the Mothership of geekdom. (My two favorite moments at MIT: Tim Berners-Lee, the dude who invented the Web, critiquing our plan by telling me “For what it is, it’s okay.”; and Bob Metcalfe, the guy who invented Ethernet, asking me the difference between a blog and a message board.);
2. Jason Pontin was the Editor-in-Chief.

I’d known of Jason from my days at Wired and Wired News. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Red Herring, one of those massive technology publications poised to strike it big. That it didn’t was of no consequence. I knew I wanted to work for him.

I left Austin (and those who know me understand exactly how great of an opportunity this must have been to pry me away from Texas) and headed to Boston. On my first day, Jason asked me to write a 2-sentence teaser for the Table of Contents for our new website. (That I then had to build that new website in 30 days was of little consequence to him.)

I sat down, crafted my two sentences and sent them along. Within a few hours, I received this short email back:

“This sucks, and this sucks. But okay.”

I was certain my tenure at MIT was going to last for less than a day. I was 32. I had uprooted my life. Lost my girlfriend. And the first two sentences I wrote were so bad that Jason couldn’t be bothered to fix them.

Of course I wasn’t fired. This is simply the nature of communication at magazines. Amongst writers. That I was (and still am) on the lower end of that scale didn’t matter. I had to quickly develop a thick skin – 10 years into my career – unlike any I’d ever imagined before.

In Jason’s world, perfection is unattainable. But always to be strived for. There was never a time we were satisfied. There was always better.

These days, we are much better friends than we were when I worked there (although my time working for Jason still ranks as the absolute best I’ve ever had professionally, despite my own ever-growing alcoholism). We exchange thoughts – and barbs – on Twitter, stoking the professional friendship we would not have otherwise.

As I recounted this story on Twitter the other night, fully intending to use it as a lesson in my Magazine class, Jason sent this Tweet.

@Brad_King Journalism is, unlike some forms of writing, a). collaborative, despite the byline; b). and requires deep humility.

I posted this the other night – and re-create it here – because it’s important to remember that writing is a process, one that will humble you mightily on a daily basis. Writing is not something that can be done without thought, at the last minute, or with little effort.

The rewards for writing are great. I am thankful every day that I can put words on a page, which are transmitted to – well, to whomever happens to see it. I can’t imagine a more rewarding career.

But the road is not easy. And every one of us – every writing you will encounter – knows the pain that you know now. They know it viscerally. They still know it today.

We are with you. But you will be humbled.