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Kayli Peak

Professor Lucia Elden

English 111

16 October 2017

Blaming Others for Our Failures

We do not like to talk or think negatively of ourselves. Why would we? Therefore, why

would we blame ourselves and lower our self-esteem if we failed at something? If we failed a

biology exam, our first reaction is not going to be blaming ourselves, we are going to blame the

professor for not teaching us well enough. Some people cannot admit their failures and mistakes

so they blame others for them in order to escape from the responsibility. I understand that we all

deal with our failures differently and some of us may not jump to blaming others, and I applaud

the people that do not jump to that, I wish I could say I was the same way. It is easier to blame

others than to bring ourselves down. However, blaming others means we avoid the truth about

ourselves. We hold full responsibility for our successes and our failures. If we continue to

constantly blame others for our own failures throughout life, we give up the power to change

ourselves. So why exactly do we blame others for our failures?

I never heard of such a thing known as a skeleton story, but once I found out about

them, I realized that I do tell skeleton stories. In particular, when I fail and vent to someone on

why I failed something, like an exam. I never realized I did it until after reading the article by

Roger Schank, also an author of Tell Me a Story. When I called my mom to vent to her about

how awful my first biology exam had gone, I made it sound like it was completely my

professors fault. I was just going on and on about how he did not teach the needed materials and

was awful at what he did and I believed myself. I changed the story and made a skeleton out of it
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about my exam and that darn biology professor, and I made my myself and mother fully

convinced that it was his fault. The real problem in using skeletons this way is that the story

tellers usually believe what they themselves are saying. (130). That was exactly what I did.

When I read the article that Schank had written, one particular quote stood out to me because

Schank stated, The art of skeleton selection is exactly that-an art. No real objective reality exists

here. One can see and tell about events in any way that one wants to. In each case, certain aspects

of the story being transmitted are enhanced and certain elements are left out all together, (130).

It was within seconds after that I had realized I just blamed my biology professor for my failure.

My failure is in my control. I left out the fact that he gave us a review, that he had helpful

worksheets in our course packet to work on, and that he was only an email away if I needed

assistance. It was up to me to find a way for me to understand the information better. It was

entirely up to me how much time I chose to study and what to study in the textbook. It was not

his fault that his boring bird stories drained the life out of me and I did not learn anything from

that. It is my job to make learning interesting, not blame others because I failed to do so.

Gerald Graff, a professor of English at the University of Illinois, would agree with me if I

said that it was entirely my biology professors fault. However, I have accepted that it was

certainly not his fault. I have always loved biology however, Graff states, whereas a dullard will

find a way to drain the interest out of the richest subject, (Graff paragraph 3). By all means, the

statement is correct. The way that my biology professor learns better is by connecting the

information with birds. That worked for him and it obviously did not work for me. Graff argues

in his article that students should be allowed to develop their academic skills and achieve in their

academics through their interests. That we as students should love learning if we were taught in a

way that connected it to our interests. To say that students need to see their interests through
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academic eyes (paragraph 17), is hard for us students to realize. We may be used to teachers

or professors that make learning interesting so we never learned how to try to learn through our

interests. Making students nonacademic interests an object of academic study is useful, then

for getting students attention and overcoming boredom and alienation, but this tactic wont in

itself necessarily move them closer to an academically rigorous treatment of those interests,

(paragraph 17). Graff believes that professors are missing the opportunity, (paragraph 18). He

believes that professors should learn the interests of each one of their students and find a way to

connect everything to help develop the students academic skills. Professors cannot take the time

to do that. We are here paying for our education. That should be enough motivation for us to try

and make the learning interesting and connect it with our interest so we can develop our

academic skills on a subject. Why should we blame the professor for not making the lecture

interesting?

It almost feels like Mezirow and Graff wrote their articles somewhat based off each

other. Mezirow would agree with Graff on many different things. The adult educator must

recognize both the learners objectives and goal. The educators responsibility is to help learners

reach their objectives, (Mezirow p. 90). Graff and Mezirow think the same way. They both

believe that a students success falls into the professors hands. They imply that professors

should carry students hands and tell them what they need to learn and how to learn it in order to

pass the class. That it should be the professors job to help each student connect the material they

learn in class with something that they are interested in. They blame the professors for

everything. Professors are here to teach us and help us learn, but not to hold our hand through it.

It is ultimately up to us how we learn and to figure out the best way to develop our academic

skills. Maybe some of us had a certain teacher in high school where they did everything to help
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you learn and helped you out with everything and held your hand through it all. College is not

like that. What we learn, how we learn, and how we develop our academic skills is on us. So,

when we fail an exam or something, we blame our professors because they did not help us

enough. This happens whenever we try to understand actions that do not work the way we

anticipated, (Mezirow p. 88). For a first-year college student, like myself, it is hard to not go

straight to blaming the professor for my failure.

Failure can be a hard thing to accept. I understand that we all deal with our failures

differently and some of us may not jump to blaming others, and I applaud the people that do not

jump to that, I wish I could say I was the same way. Blaming others means we avoid the truth

about ourselves. We hold full responsibility for our successes and our failures. If we continue to

constantly blame others for our own failures throughout life, we give up the power to change

ourselves. Maybe we tend to blame others for our failures because we switch the skeleton of the

story. We tell it to people the way we want to and the way we tell it is how we believe it. Maybe

we blame others because the professors are not doing their jobs and drain the life out of all the

subjects. So many maybe this or maybe that. But, why do we blame others for our failures? We

should own up to them. Our future is on us right now. Blaming people because we are not where

we want to be, not doing as good as we want to be, will not get us anywhere. Blaming others

shows negative self-esteem because you do not take the own blame of your own mistake because

you are not comfortable with yourself enough to accept that it is on you.

Works Cited:
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Graff, Gerald. Hidden Intellectualism. They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in

Academic Writing. Ed. G. Graff and C. Birkenstein. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

2010, pp. 198-205.

Mezirow, Jack. Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. Exploring Connections:

Learning in the 21st Century. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2016, pp. 87-93.

Schank, Roger. Story Skeletons. Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Memory,

1990. Story Skeletons and Story Fitting. Anthenum 1991, pp. 129-140.