marin catholic FA L L 2 0 1 9
Beauty The
of Failure
Inside:
Courtney Sembler ‘11 Fail Fast. Fail Hard. – Pg. 11
Jared Goff ‘13
Tackling Failure – Pg. 23
Shared stories of using failure as a stepping stone to success.
M
arin Catholic is a Roman Catholic college preparatory school serving young men and women. Consistent with our Gospel values, we are committed to the education of the whole person. As a community that values faith, knowledge and service, we provide our students with a spiritual, academic, and extra-curricular environment. We expect our students, through their experiences in the classroom and as active members of the school community, to develop the attributes of an educated person: responsibility, both personal and social; critical thinking ability; and appreciation for the complexity of the world around us. In partnership with parents, we hope to instill in our students the confidence that will empower them, as informed and compassionate individuals, to effect change in our world. We are committed to fostering learning as a lifelong process.
Board of Regents 2019-20 Shannon Alten Stacy Miller Azcarate Robert S. Basso Michael Bentivoglio Jack Boland ‘74 Gregory A. Bullian ‘76 Fred Craves, PhD*
David Friend, First Vice Chair Duane M. Geck* Drew Gordon, Second Vice Chair Jono Grayson ‘06 Ross Guehring ‘98 Margaret Jacobsen
Marcia R. Jervis ‘61 James Jordan Knopf ’93 Pamela Lyons George W. Pasha, IV ‘80* Kevin Sharps, Chair Anthony Spinale *Emeritus
Production Notes This magazine is a gift to the Alumni, Current Families, Faculty, Staff and Friends of Marin Catholic. MC Staff Tim Navone, President Chris Valdez, Principal Roxanne Civarello ’06 Director of Communications Jacqueline Tobe ‘01 Director of Advancement Sandy Starkey Manager, Community & Alumni Relations Dana O’Connor ‘95 Database Manager Terry Powers Associate Director of Advancement MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Writers/Editors Tim Navone Roxanne Civarello ‘06 Terry Powers Linda Siler
Photo Contributors Jim Gillespie Ron Greene/VarsityPix Jennifer Skinner
Printing Bill Hurley ’77, H & H Printing
Contact Us: Marin Catholic 675 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Kentfield, CA 94904 Email: communications@marincatholic.org Phone: 415-464-3222 School Website: www.marincatholic.org
Design Gilbert & Associates
IN THIS ISSUE through Failure 1 Wisdom Chris Valdez, Principal
Failure is not the Final Word 17 Carter Cox
C enter Court to Center Stage 37 John Michael McCall ‘19
Navigating Failure 3 Mackenzie Wagoner ‘05
No Space for Failure 21 Luke Burgis
L essons Learned 39 Ashley Saia ‘06
ackling Failure 23 TJared Goff ‘13
Failure & The Growth Mindset 41 Michael Brady
Failure to Thriving 27 Tom Jacobsen ‘17
Embracing Failure 43 Lachlan MacLean ‘02
L earn by Roomba 5 Tony Gambardella ‘08
7 Anne-Marie Funk
T he Beauty of Home
9 Jeremiah Moultrie ‘22
T he Importance of Failure
11 Courtney Sembler ‘11
Fail Fast. Fail Hard.
of yarn 13 ABillypiece Smith ‘03 C hanging Courses 15 Sister Peter Joseph, OP
Doing What it Takes 29 Amber Wipfler ‘97 No Fear 31 Orin Carpenter Z oning Out 33 Alena Suski ‘17
of Chemistry 45 AEliseLackTarrant ‘07
47 Redirect Alexandra Troia ‘19
The Sacrament 35 Cthatonfession: makes Failure Beautiful Father Andrew Ginter
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
1—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Wisdom through Failure Dear MC Families and Friends, Second only to lived experience, stories provide the greatest learning experiences. The “Parable of the Prodigal Son”, one of the greatest stories of all time, is about the wisdom gained through an epic fail. In the parable, an imperious son prematurely cashes out his inheritance and sets off into the world where he squanders it all, falling quickly into poverty. His failure leads to despair but, once able to muster up the courage, he returns home full of contrition begging his father to accept him back. The father in the parable does what a good parent should. First, he sets his son free to find out about living for himself with the awareness that the risk of failure is high. Upon the son’s return, the father runs out to greet him, not only accepting him back into the family with a loving embrace, but also throwing him a great feast. In this response, the father and son experience two essential tenets of our faith: mercy and grace. Mercy is the forgiving embrace; Grace is the celebratory feast. Confident that mercy and grace are givens, contemporary Catholic education should follow the spirit of the parable, especially in an age and culture that can be risk averse. Like the loving father, we must provide, even design, opportunities for our students to take chances and make mistakes–to experience failure–so to accept that failure is a necessary and beneficial feature of the road to success. Our hope is that when students risk failure, even in the small ways, one can in high school–performing music in front of hundreds of people, taking an unpopular stance among their peers–they are getting stronger and developing that most attractive attribute of the prodigal son: an adventurous spirit. God bless, Chris Valdez Principal MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 2
Navigating Failure By Mackenzie Wagoner ‘05 Everything I’ve ever needed to know about navigating failure I learned at the airport. I was a standby passenger until I turned 23, which, for the uninitiated, is a crash course in humility and accepting the unexpected. Flying standby will almost never go how you want it to go. I’ve spent days hop-scotching around the country. I’ve slept in airports. I’ve been pulled off of flights seconds before takeoff. But I always ended up where I needed to go—just not always by the route I expected and certainly not always when I wanted to get there. The trick, I learned, was to have my bags packed, to show up, and to stay nimble. I had my eye set on working for Vogue practically since I was able to read. At 19, I didn’t get the internship. At 23, I missed out on a job assisting the magazine’s legendary editor Phyllis Posnick. It felt like total defeat. I took a less glamorous job fact-checking for Architectural Digest because it was owned by the same parent company. I told HR and a few choice colleagues about my professional hopes, one of whom put me up for a role at Into the Gloss (now Glossier) where I became employee #4. It was a very lucky detour. There, I got the call I had been waiting for my whole life: Vogue wanted me to join the team as their senior beauty editor. When I finally interviewed with Anna Wintour, I wasn’t even nervous. My bags, so to speak, had been packed for years. Failure is inevitable but more importantly, it’s impermanent. No matter how slim the odds, if you really want something, pack your bags and show up. Practice what you love on your own without permission. Stay nimble and pay attention. You never know when a seat may open.
3—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Failure is inevitable but more importantly, it’s impermanent.
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 4
By Tony Gambardella ‘08 Failure is not easy to achieve. Opting out of a decision or pursuing a goal with strings attached don’t count – failure is putting full effort into a project or relationship, working through challenges that arise, but ultimately acknowledging that the path chosen isn’t going to succeed. It’s fair to think that fear of failure drives indecisiveness, but I think that more often than not, it simply drives excessive caution. We stick to what we think we know or can predict, giving preference to meeting our own expectations rather than attempting to exceed them at risk. The difficulty is this: to grow, to improve, and to be successful, we have to be willing to attempt what we may not achieve – willing to fail.
As content as I am currently, if everything is the same in a year, I won’t be happy. I will continue pushing myself, learning new things, taking new risks. Some of these will work out, others will be failures. But, like my Roomba, each failure won’t be defeat, just a pause before I keep moving down a different trajectory toward success. Tony Gambardella ‘08 received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA and now works as Senior Propulsion Build Engineer.
5—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
a mb Roo
I like to describe my approach to challenges as “learn by Roomba” – after bumping off enough walls and furniture, eventually the whole floor is cleaned. Failure has driven so much of the progress I’ve made in the last 10 years – I was rejected from my top college choices, I came close to losing my scholarship in grad school, I interned at what I had expected was my dream job only to move to another company, I had major proposals rejected at work after months of effort, and I’ve been turned down by people I’ve wanted to impress. However, each failure, properly acknowledged and reviewed, provided confirmation of what wasn’t work and guided redirection toward the right solution. Now, I can confidently say that I went to the right college, I work in the right job, I’m married to the right woman, I live in the right city, and I don’t have regrets – just decisions where my own expectations didn’t match reality of that which I was capable.
by
Learn
Each failure won’t be defeat, just a pause before I keep moving down a different trajectory toward success. MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 6
The Beauty of Home By Anne-Marie Funk
M
arin Catholic faculty and staff gathered together on August 6th for our opening retreat. The sense of rejuvenation from summer vacation mingled with the energy of anticipation for a new school year. Our Director of Campus Ministry, Michelle Vollert, spoke to us about how we are each called by God to be part of this MC family and that we are truly home. Feet tapped along as we watched a video of the class of 2019 singing and dancing to Phillip Phillip’s “Home” at graduation. I found myself thinking about this sense of home as we welcomed the Class of 2023. I imagine that many of them were too nervous to eat breakfast that morning- and I bet that many of them wondered what they had gotten themselves into as they ran through our welcome “gauntlet”. Tears came to my eyes as I watched our peer advisors warmly welcome and guide the nervous freshmen through the transition of beginning high school. I know what it feels like to be new and to face the unknown. Back in June 2018, I packed up my car and drove across the country to San Francisco. I had learned about Marin Catholic through my studies at Notre Dame, and was both excited and nervous to trade coasts. The busy pace of the school year rapidly picked up tempo, and as we worked hard, I gradually picked up names and faces along the way. I treasured our retreats, games, and arts as a beautiful way to get to know our community. However, it was in the little village of La Mina in the Dominican Republic that something clicked. As I traveled with Tim Navone, Mario Pacheco, Annie Navone ’18, and 13 MC students, we dove into a new culture and language. We worked with the locals, prayed together, listened to student-given virtue talks, and laughed together. I tried surfing with the locals and got pounded by the waves. We experienced the deep and simple faith of a pastor’s family as we mixed cement, built a wall, and painted and fixed a home for his family. Suddenly I found that Marin Catholic had become my home. As we embark upon a new school year with our MC family, it’s a powerful time to lean into the struggle of transition and to embrace the joys that lie ahead. Part of the beauty of home is that we are offered the freedom to fail, to be held accountable, to learn, and to flourish. My prayer is that each and every one of our students will feel a deep sense of home at MC. Anne-Marie Funk is Assistant Principal for Student Life at Marin Catholic.
41—MARINCatholic 7—MARIN Catholic• •FALL FALL2019 2019
We are offered the freedom to fail, to be held accountable, to learn, and to flourish.
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 8
The Importance of
By Jeremiah Moultrie ‘22 Since the beginning of my high school career, my life has been filled with failure, understanding, and new opportunities. Coming into MC, I felt like I failed myself and my peers by not signing up for frosh football. My failure to sign up later led me to understand how close the football team becomes and what I was missing out on. Even though I wasn’t a part of the football team, I stayed as close as possible to it, which led to an opportunity to announce Frosh football games. Heading into sophomore year, I signed up for JV football and was excited to play. I attended morning and afternoon lifts and “spring ball”, all in preparation for the JV football season. Unfortunately, my parents thought it would be in my best interest to focus on my academics. When this happened, I felt like I let everybody down, but I have come to understand that when one door closes, another one opens. Shortly after, Assistant Principal for Athletics, Mr. Dave Basso, gave me the opportunity to announce varsity football, which is a huge honor. Failure is just a part of life, but it is also very important, because without failure, we wouldn’t be able to progress in life by learning from it. Sophomore Jeremiah Moultrie is a St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Scholar and the current “voice of the Wildcats.” Football photo: Ron Greene/VarsityPix 9—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Failure
Without failure, we wouldn’t be able to progress in life by learning from it. MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 10
11—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Fail Fast. Fail Hard: My journey with failure.
By Courtney Sembler ‘11
I
left the meeting with my head hung low and tears building behind my eyes. What had I done wrong? What signs did I miss? How was I going to improve? I stumbled back onto the streets of Boston where I had lived for the last few years after graduating from college. I had moved all the way across the country without knowing a single person to work for the up and coming tech company, HubSpot, Inc. It was late summer and I had just received my first bad quarterly review where my boss told me I was not performing to the high standards that they expected. This wasn’t only devastating but also a surprise. I had been in my current role less than a year and had been given very little instruction on how to do well in it. As an early twenties woman who was determined to succeed, I felt alone and crushed at the unexpected feedback that I might not have “what it takes”. That moment was over two years ago. And without it, I am not sure that I would be where I am today. Currently, I am a Manager on the HubSpot Academy Team and lead a passionate and inspiring group of educators who are helping transform the way the world does business. But more than that, I am strong and confident (not every day but most) in who I am and the work I am doing.
‘‘How could I have failed without even realizing I was failing?” The word failure came up a lot after my performance review. With myself and others. How could I have failed without even realizing I was failing? Sometimes that’s the way it happens. It sneaks up on you and all of a sudden you have a
decision to make. Wallow in your failure or find a way to make it a lesson. I decided that both was probably the way to go. As someone who never likes to meet the status quo, I moved forward in my own way from failure. I cried. A lot. But I also improved. I studied process and how teams
‘‘Wallow in your failure or find a way to make it a lesson. I decided that both was probably the way to go.” are run. I picked up mentors left and right and tried to get my hands on whatever I could to help better my performance. I pursued opportunities to learn from others and sought help outside of my company and team to broaden my views. And yet it still wasn’t enough. Because my failure had opened my eyes to something I couldn’t hide from anymore. The truth was that I wasn’t happy in my current role and it didn’t matter how hard I tried, I probably never would be. I went back to my manager at the time and explained to them that I was interested in looking for another opportunity at HubSpot and four weeks later I signed a new contract and left my team. I spoke with my manager and told them that if it wasn’t for failing, I wouldn’t have pushed myself as hard as I did. The mentors and the learning I had done since receiving that harsh feedback electrified my system and I was going to be able to bring all that learning to my new team and position. Failure doesn’t always mean that you come out the otherside extremely good at what you had initially failed at. Sometimes it’s the marker on your journey that guides back onto the right side of the path.
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A piece f yarn By Billy Smith ‘03 I am in the process of designing and making a bag that is ‘knit-to-shape.’ It is called Bilio Bag. It is far from perfect, but better than before. It gets me up in the morning. I care about it. It makes me happy. I still continue to fail. When looking at a piece of yarn, think of ways in which it was made. Question everything. Feel it, pull it, twist it, use it, love it, prove it. Make a decision, embrace uncertainty, and imagine the possibilities. That piece of yarn now has meaning. It has purpose. It matters. Yet, it fails. Like the piece of yarn, an idea is fragile, and at times is nothing at all. Days can go by (just as days go by) and an idea may never come. It could be forced to exist, fail expectations, and blamed for not working, but in reality, it is purely part of the process of learning and growing. In designing a product, it is easy to make it stand out and label it new or different. The greatest challenge of all is to truly make it better. This pursuit can be never-ending. There is no right or wrong way to fail, just the simple act of doing, and to succeed, all you have to do is something. After a career in product design and development at Patagonia and Apple, Billy Smith founded two companies, Sporting Sails and Bilio, and serves as CEO for both organizations.
There is no right or wrong way to fail, just the simple act of doing. 13—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019— 14
Sister Peter Joseph, OP, who joined the MC community this fall, had many dreams before becoming a Dominican Sister. But those dreams unrealized were far from failures, rather, they were steps to her ultimate calling of serving the Lord. When I was about 12 years old, I heard the call to be a foreign missionary. Actually, I planned to become a foreign missionary, a worldfamous pianist, and a brilliant neurosurgeon, preferably all at once. By the time I was heading off to college, I gave up on the idea of the foreign missions due to distaste for anything other than hot dogs and Tex-Mex. I started college as a piano performance major and poured all of my energy in it. My ambition became my undoing. With too little sleep and too much practice, I injured my arm so badly that completing a piano performance degree became utterly impractical by the first semester of my freshman year. Frustrated and confused, I changed my major to classics, and took a job in the classics department where some of my friends worked. One evening as we were working late, we began discussing where we could go to church that Sunday. All of us had grown up in different Protestant denominations, and we were looking for a church similar to ones we had attended - but we found it difficult to reconcile our theologies. What was the Lord’s Supper? Should praise and worship music be allowed, or only traditional hymns? Then my friend Brock asked a shocking question. Why don’t we believe in the communion of saints, like the Catholics do? He quoted a few Bible verses to prove his point, and I found myself unable to refute his arguments. I became determined to learn what Catholics actually believed so that I could bring Brock back from the heresy of Catholicism. My new major required me to compile and study a lengthy reading list spanning ancient epics to modern literature. I decided to use this requirement to determine how best to argue against Catholicism. With a severely critical eye, I began to read the great Catholic
Changing Courses By Sister Peter Joseph, OP
God pulled me through my failures to “something much greater than I could have dreamed of.”
15—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
authors: Augustine, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, the Venerable Bede, Anselm. Despite my dislike of Catholicism, I found that these authors had a broad knowledge of the world they lived in, a deep knowledge of Scripture, and a clear love of Jesus Christ. Later that year, I attended Mass for the first time. There it was: the beauty of Scripture, the joy of a church in prayer, the glory of God present in a way I’d never felt before. At first, I didn’t understand what was so different, but as I continued attending Mass, I was more and more drawn to the Catholic faith. As I read more, learned more, talked more with Catholics who knew and loved their faith, I was convinced of its truth. Most of all, I desired to receive Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist. I was received into the Catholic Church at the end of my sophomore year of college. My life plans were in shambles - I was not going to be a famous neurosurgeon, I couldn’t become a world class pianist, and I still wasn’t ready to eat the strange foods that are the lot of a foreign missionary. And yet, I was filled with joy. The God who found me and invited me into His Church surely had more good plans for my life. As I write this over a decade later, I’ve only partially completed one of my life dreams - as a religious sister, I do live the life of a missionary. In his great love and mercy, God pulled me through my failures to something much greater than I could have dreamed of.
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Failure is not the Final Word By Carter Cox
17—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Students are terrified they won’t be the very best at something, and not being “best” feels like “failure.” Over the past fifteen years, since I began teaching, one of my mother’s favorite stories to remind me of is the night of my seventh grade academic awards assembly. It was the first such event, growing up, that I could have been invited to; as such, I went into it without any particular expectation. I knew only that I had received an ornate letterhead inviting me to the evening assembly because I had achieved something called honor roll. I could not, at the time, have explained what my particular “honor” was, but the invitation was embossed on sturdy, ivory paper, and I felt proud. After an evening of sitting in a cramped auditorium seat, however—after watching peer after peer called onstage to receive individual awards in math, English, and the like—I no longer felt proud. I felt dejected. I had not realized honor roll was, in fact, the lowest common denominator of such an auspicious event—that everyone invited had achieved it. Honor roll itself wasn’t even recognized during the ceremony; I think the rationale must have been that the ceremony itself served as recognition. In effect, my only “honor” was to sit and clap for my more accomplished classmates as they received their relatively distinctive awards. My mother always says that, as we walked to our car at the end of the evening, my reflection to my parents was: “You walk into these things feeling special, but you walk out feeling like a loser.” The idea that I might have been such a loser hadn’t even occurred to me until I saw myself publicly compared to other kids. Once my school made the comparison for me, though, I felt humiliated. Today, I see the same kind of pain in my students. They scramble to navigate each day’s litany of checkboxes. They are
grade obsessed—yes, “obsession” really is the right word. They are terrified they won’t be the very best at something, and not being “best” feels like “failure.” Moreover, as was my experience in seventh grade, my students never seem to worry about failure except when they sense judgement from the outside—from their peers, teachers, or society—but they sense that sort of judgement often. My students’ pain derives not from failure itself, but from a fear of being seen as such. This is hardly surprising. Living in the Bay Area, we are all inundated with images and ideas of success, mostly related to money and fame. Throw some misguided, illinformed social media into the mix, and we begin to conflate our understandings of other people’s success with our own. Anything less than the opulent, material forms of success we see all around us starts to feel like failure. Still more unsettling, however, is that we’ve trained them to think this way. We ought to train them differently. I wish my students would ask themselves, “Why am I so afraid of failing?” I wish my colleagues and I—and my students’ families—would ask, “Why am I so afraid of seeing this student fail?” The most overlooked part of the problem is the word “failure” itself, that it is a binary word, an absolute. It’s limited meaning confuses the nature of many situations. Far more often, the nature of our experiences is complex and subtle, requiring a more nuanced, less binary understanding of the experience itself. What exactly—in day-to-day school, hobbies, friendships and family life—are our students reaching for? What is their answer? Is it a firmer grasp of
FALL 2019 • MARIN Catholic—18
If words like
goal, risk, and
growth become more mainstream, so too will the modes of thinking such words facilitate. language and science with which to describe the Universe? Is it a more skillful aesthetic with which to express thoughts and feelings? Is it deeper, more meaningful relationships upon which to build connections and community? Unfortunately, most of the time, when I ask them what they’re reaching for, they say, “I want to get an A.” And that’s on all of us, isn’t it? Let me be the first to say it: If we must speak binarily, then we are failing our students in this regard. Of course, we’re not really failing, but therein lies the point: We might actually be doing okay, but not okay enough. What’s far more accurate is to say, “We can do better.” And yes, we can do much, much better. The best indicator that we can do better is that our students so rarely seem to say it themselves: “I can do better.” And when they do, they so often say it with their heads hung in defeat, as if admitting some awful truth, that they may not have done the absolute best possible job. As if room for growth is their shameful secret, outed by a report card. How to respond? Our goal should be to help students increase their respective literacies regarding failure. We must avoid euphemism, and we musn’t avoid conflict or dilemma, but we must also emphasize process and progress as the truest metrics. This means we need to arm students with better language, language that facilitates greater cognizance— of both task and self. If words like goal, risk, and growth become more mainstream, so too will the modes of thinking such words facilitate. Here are four questions I propose would be helpful to them while in any process (which means all the time): What am I trying to accomplish? Why am I trying to accomplish it? What will I do to achieve what I’m trying to accomplish? What makes me think that third part will work?
19—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
We must better train them to think these ways and with these words, and then we must allow them to practice. A lot. They must practice thinking and acting this way so much that school alone is not sufficient. It must happen at home too. We must remember that, as autonomous as they may strive to be, our students take most of their cues from us. We have to be more focused on the why and how of things, and we mustn’t allow ourselves to sacrifice the means in justification of the ends. We must remember that, especially in school, so often the means are the ends. The process is the product. The growth is the why. I’ve recently been reading Letters to a Young Catholic, in which author George Weigel writes that, in Catholicism, “Failure is not the final word.” He is, of course, writing about a far grander sense of absolution than I’m writing about here, but I think that, for a Catholic educational institution, instilling such an idea on an everyday scale—the idea that failure of any singular task or exercise is only one step in a larger process of learning and growth—seems doable. It may even be a basic competency, our mandate. I like to remind my students of Ovid’s words, which I keep posted in Room 303: “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.” Growth happens over time, and it often is painful, but it always happens best when endowed with clear direction or purpose. I know I cannot do my work effectively, I cannot serve and support my students, if they do not understand their own respective work, if they do not understand what they are trying to accomplish, or how, or why. And, unlike my seventh grade self, I know my failure to do the absolute best at this is no reason to feel like a loser. It is the reason I should continue to strive for improvement, for growth, for greatness.
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 20
No Space for
Failure By Luke Burgis
21—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
In the fall of 2020, Marin Catholic will open the Principled Entrepreneurship Institute in the renovated St. Anselm Hall on campus. Speaker, author of Unrepeatable, and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University, Luke Burgis is helping design the curriculum for the Principled Entrepreneurship course and sees failure as a key component to the success and ultimate purpose in life. In an age of utopian ideologies, there doesn’t seem to be any space left for failure. We have to be intentional about making some. An education that doesn’t prepare people to confront and endure failure is no education at all. All our lives we’re preparing for something that in the eyes of the world looks like failure. We need to put this idea to death. A lifetime of gazing at the cross—and of learning to embrace it as our greatest teacher—is what separates the Christian entrepreneur from the mere do-goodery that surrounds us. For us, the cross is beautiful. It’s the power and wisdom and triumph of God over sin and death. The beauty of failure is Jesus Christ himself. We can’t follow him to the Father unless we follow him to the cross. My life as an entrepreneur has been a school of disillusionment--with systems and structures and history itself, including my own. Nothing quite seems to work out as I imagined. But this disillusionment (literally, parting ways from illusions) shouldn’t be a bad word. It leads to the liberation from the self-deception that I’m made for this world alone, or that I can build a heaven on earth, or that it’s my job to fix other people--or even myself. In the end, there’s only one true failure. In the words of Charles Péguy, it’s “not to have been a saint.” If we’re following Christ to the cross, that failure is assured us. So is the beauty.
“
An education that doesn’t prepare people to confront and endure failure is no education at all.
”
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 22
23—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Tackling Failure By Jared Goff ‘13
MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 242
When it comes to making sure failure transforms into success, there is one man who stands above the rest. Jared Goff ‘13. He has written the book on turning challenge into glory, time and time again. Most people don’t realize the NFL’s number one overall draft pick failed to land the starting quarterback job his junior year of high school. That setback drove him to work twice as hard to earn the job just three games later. He went on to lead the Wildcats to a 13-0 record, but encountered a stinging stumble with a loss in the NCS Championship at the Oakland Coliseum. A year later, with a lot of hard work, experience under his belt, and the fuel he gained from that defeat, Goff led the Wildcats to upset El Cerrito in the NCS Championship and ultimately a ticket to the State Championship. But at State, Jared suffered another tough loss. While a failure on the scoreboard, it wasn’t a failure for Goff. It was just another experience to add fuel to his future triumphs. This path repeated in college and finished full circle. Goff says the darkest time in dealing with failure was his freshman season where the Golden Bears finished 1-11. But he quickly righted the ship the next season going 5-7, and in his junior year he shattered the Cal record books with 26 different honors and led Cal to victory in the Armed Forces Bowl slinging six touchdowns. With this history, those close to Goff knew where he was headed after an 0-7 rookie year with the Los Angeles Rams. They had seen time and time again how Goff handles failure. In just two short years, Goff went from a “winless rookie bust” to the Superbowl. No surprise in Kentfield. Here is what Goff has learned both on an off the field in dealing with failure. You can look at failure in two ways. Either this is the worst thing in world, which it absolutely feels like, or how can I learn from this? It’s that simple. You have to feel it so you can hold those failures in the back of your mind and say, “How am I going to use this experience to better myself in the future?”
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My freshman year at Cal was the darkest time in my football career, but I kept pounding through and pounding away to make sure I was moving forward. Two years later when we won the bowl game, it was so much sweeter because I got see the whole culmination of my hard work. In the NFL it is sometimes hard not to get down on yourself when everyone thinks you suck or thinks you’re the worst, but you have to find a way to drive through that. I think what it comes down to is there are people who believe in you and people who love you, so how do you work to prove them right. It’s really a game you have to play within yourself. You can never let self-doubt get in the way of what you want to do. Now I am in the process of dealing with the loss of the Super Bowl, which is tough and not fun. I have to get through it, just like I did with the previous obstacles, but as time goes on, these obstacles get easier to get through because the experiences are similar. And hopefully one of these years I won’t have to deal with these obstacles and I’ll be able to celebrate the entire offseason. I have used all my experiences and obstacles to get me where I am today. But people around the country and the world only know me as the number one pick in the NFL draft until now. What they don’t know are all the experiences I have gone through on every football team I have played for that allowed me to grow and accept adversity as part of my daily life. And the more you are able to drive through adversity, especially when when you get through the toughest situation you have ever faced, then you are like, “Okay, I got this.” It would be like saying to yourself, “I got a B in this class, well, I remember when I had an F and I turned that around into an A. So I got a B? No big deal. I’ll figure this out.” I also think it helps to keep things in perspective. I have good values and I know what is important, so if I get a C on a test or don’t do well in a football game, I understand there is so much more to life. And those are things you can fix. Focus on what is going well in your life and use that to push out the bad stuff. The most important thing to remember if you encounter something negative and you look at it as a failure, then you will never be able to move on from it. It will haunt you and it will hurt you. But if you look at the experience as part of your bigger plan that gets you to the pinnacle, it’s a much healthier mindset and ultimately more fulfilling.
You can never let self-doubt get in the way of what you want to do. MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 26
Failure toThriving By Tom Jacobsen ‘17
60 Minutes recently featured St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, NJ, and showed how one man, Fr. Edwin Leahy, turned a failing school closure into a thriving inner-city Catholic school that has unparalleled academic success. Marin Catholic alum, Tom Jacobsen, ‘17 spent last summer working with the students as a part of his Naval Academy training. “Whatever hurts my brother hurts me!” St. Benedict’s Prep motto What I did: As part of my summer training at the United States Naval Academy, I interned at St. Benedict’s College Prep, an inner city boys high school in Newark, New Jersey. Along with living with and mentoring the students, my job was to teach a class on fitness and nutrition called “Fit and Trim.” These students had little knowledge of fitness or nutrition, so it was my responsibility to get them started on a healthier path. At the beginning of each day, we all repeated the school’s affirmation, ‘Whatever hurts my brother hurts me!’ Then we started with motivational activities, goal setting strategies, and a crossfit style workout followed by yoga. In the afternoon, I taught lessons on nutrition, got them involved in the crossfit games, and then we would all jump in the pool. What they learned: Over the course of just two weeks, the boys learned that the body is stronger than the mind thinks it is; you can push yourself harder than your brain tells you and can accomplish what you think is impossible. Consistency and goal setting are keys to a healthier lifestyle. The boys began to push each other to participate in the fitness classes exercises and make better eating choices. Learning and doing became infectious. I have no doubt that the boys will take what they learned and continue to apply it in their lives to be healthy, as well as be open minded about future opportunities. What I learned/takeaways: I learned that it is possible to motivate and to build strong relationships with the boys by fully committing myself to them and their development. I also learned that people will respond to someone that shows that he cares about them and that love and kindness can transcend differences in backgrounds. I played basketball everyday with the kids and spent a great deal of time getting to know them. By the end of the first week, the boys, who were somewhat unresponsive at first, put away their phones, engaged in activities and began to ask questions. I tried to show them that we are all part of God’s family and matter, and they responded. Working with the boys at St. Benedict’s was a spiritually fulfilling experience for me because I could see that my influence was having an impact on some of the boys. 27—MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019
Photo by Chris Owens
“You can be any good thing you want to be; you go and conquer.” MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 28
Doing what it takes. By Amber Wipfler ‘97 My first semester of law school didn’t go exactly as planned. I thought I was understanding—and even enjoying—the fast-moving lectures, the century-old opinions written in Ye Olde Englishe, the 100-page reading assignments that were due yesterday. Then my grades came in. C. C-minus. C-plus. Hmm. Clearly, something had gone a little bit awry. Determined to do better in Semester #2, I nervously paid a visit to one of my professors. She stared at me, unmoved, as I gave her my much-practiced spiel about how it was my dream to be a lawyer, and I would so deeply appreciate any advice she could give about how to improve my grade in her class. She squinted through her glasses. “Who are you, again?” Had I forgotten to introduce myself? Or had she forgotten already? “Amber Wipfler, Professor. I’m in your morning section.” “Ms. Whistler.” (I didn’t dare correct her.) “You’d probably save yourself a lot of grief and money if you called it quits now. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I can recognize when people don’t have what it takes to be a lawyer.” I’d like to say that her words were the catalyst for a whole new me, and that my red-hot anger and desire to prove her wrong drove me to previously unheard-of levels of academic achievement. The truth looks a little more like this: I went home, cried into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, felt like an imposter and an idiot for the remainder of the school year, and went into the summer with grades that looked an awful lot like those from the semester before. And then I did something that, in the long run, was far more valuable than acing finals and making law review and getting a fancy summer internship. I stuck with it. I kept doing something that I objectively wasn’t very good at, because I liked it and wanted it and knew I could get better. I learned not to define myself by grades, and that success can be measured by more than one yardstick. And when I interviewed for my job with the state Department of Justice, and made my first oral argument before the Ninth Circuit, and filed my first brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, not a single person asked me about my grades in first year Civ Pro.
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I learned not to define myself by grades, and that
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success can be measured by more than one yardstick.
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By Orin Carpenter “A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he gives up.” Growing up, my parents instilled this in both my brother and me. They always communicated to me that if I never experienced failure then I would never truly know who I am because adversity has a way of revealing your true character. From sports to art, failure has been one of my best teachers. I understand who I am and what to expect of myself. In sports, I was declared a top recruit in basketball but later was overlooked and had to resort to track as my way into college. Through that failure, I found a strength in myself as well as a love for track and excelled far more than I ever imagined. I also learned how to find a silver lining even amongst a dark day. Academically, I struggled because I was a challenged learner and even today that challenge continues to remind me of my shortcomings. In pursuit of my PhD, my prospectus was turned down 38 times before being approved. Many would be ashamed and consider that a loss, but the challenge of 38 failures reminded me that a person can fail many times but not be a failure until they give up.”
You can only savor the flavor for success if you don’t mind tasting failure along the way.
Roger Babson says, “When we are flat on our backs there is no way to look but up.” This same characteristic rings true in art and the creation of expression. There is no such thing as a failed painting, there is only a lot of practice for a successful one. The greatest paintings became products after many failures. I’ve been a painter for more than 30 years professionally. In that time, I’ve submitted to various competitions and exhibits. For 20 of those 30 years, I’ve been rejected and my work wasn’t “what they were looking for.” In recent years, I finally saw the fruits of that 20 year labor. I was featured in magazines, won competitions, and published in 3 books. This same approach to the respect for failure I teach to my children as well as my students. If you allow the fear of failing stop you from trying you will never succeed. As my students create their artwork, I always remind them in order to know if that idea was the best one, you must have other ideas to test its prominence. In that testing many failures may arise. However, through those failures, you now have confidence in knowing which idea was the best one. Once the students experience process through failing they now have greater respect for the process and less fear for failure. They understand the concept, “If you fail to plan, then you should plan to fail.” Truman Capote says, “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” I say, “You can only savor the flavor for success if you don’t mind tasting failure along the way.” Orin Carpenter is the Department Chair of the Arts at Marin Catholic
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Zoning Out By Alena Suski ‘17 College is said by many to be “the best four years of your life” ... and that puts a lot of pressure on students to not fail in choosing the right school. With depictions of college from media to stories of older friends and siblings, preconceived notions of college are difficult to avoid. This is the great unknown in high school - what is college going to be like? What should I look for in a school? What do I want to get out of it? Many universities fulfilled my criteria, but I found it difficult to choose one. I heard so many people who felt the “it” factor when visiting their university, and others described it as “feeling like home.” Looking for that feeling of comfort helped me decide on heading to Southern California. I spent my first semester navigating the changes, and it was rough. Having high expectations, I blamed my university for feeling lost. While second semester got me on track in my social and academic life, I still felt a mismatch with me and the university. Through reflection, I came to realize the beauty of the challenges of college and the expansion of my perspective on the world. I found joy in the challenge and wanted to push myself even further during this pivotal time in life. I decided comfort is not what I actually wanted, so I decided to pack up and move to New England. I asked for challenge, and that’s exactly what I got. The best way to describe transferring colleges is like freshman year all over again, only harder. Integrating into an established social scene that culturally differs from anything I had experienced in my life was no easy feat. These changes, along with a very competitive academic environment, pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to grow. This, not comfort, is what I wanted and it is providing me the opportunity to grow into the person I ultimately want to be.
I asked for challenge, and that’s exactly what I got.
Alena Suski ‘17 is now a junior at Boston College.
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Confession The Sacrament That Makes Our Failures Beautful
By Father Andrew Ginter Even before I was appointed as the Chaplain at Marin Catholic, I helped out a great deal with the Sacraments of Confessions on Kairos retreats. It is such a wonderful time. Since Confessions happen later in the retreat, the students are already at a place where they see their faults, they see the things in life that they should be grateful for, and they are ready to begin a new chapter. When they are given absolution, they look like a new person with all the weight off their shoulders. They have a new and humble smile, and they feel loved.
‘‘When they are given absolution, they look like a new person with all the weight off their shoulders.’’ This is why God forgives our failures and simply lets us know that we are loved by Him so that we can be who He created us to be. The Cross is a failure as the world sees it, but for us who believe, it is beautiful and the greatest success. Jesus conquered death and the Sacrament of Reconciliation conquers the ugliness and gives us the grace to bring our beauty into the world. Kairos is the right time for the students to bring their brokenness, see the goodness of God, the goodness of their family and friends, and bring more beauty into the world.
Father Andrew Ginter is Marin Catholic’s new Chaplain. He grew up in Novato, CA and most recently served as Associate Pastor at St. Hilary in Tiburon, CA. He is no stranger to Marin Catholic. For the past several years, he has attended retreats, heard Confession for students and staff during Advent and Lent, led our monthly Holy Hours, and took several Marin Catholic students this past summer on the Lourdes Pilgrimage in France. Welcome Father Ginter!
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W
hen I was in the third grade, it only took watching one MC varsity basketball game to know that was my certain future. I was going to be the starting point guard for Marin Catholic. I would have to work hard, but I was motivated. I took private lessons, played CYO and club, and went to camps all over the Bay Area and beyond. My body ached from all of the workouts. I got up at 6am to shoot hoops and was back in the backyard before bed. No matter how hard I worked, I always made the B team. So I worked harder and longer. I played a few minutes on the MC freshman team, more minutes on the JV team, and finally made the Varsity team (a dream come true). But I found myself cheering from the bench. I failed in realizing my ultimate dream. I was struggling, so I talked to Sister Teresa Benedicta about it and she said for my senior year, I should focus on whatever made me happiest and choose that. I thought about it and realized that what made me happy was what I had been doing for fun around my basketball pursuits. It was theater. So I decided to cheer for our team, and put myself on the stage. I never looked back. I became the starting point guard of the theater program and am now pursuing it in college and life. John Michael McCall ‘19 attends Otterbein University. He was one of more than 2000 students who auditioned for their esteemed BFA Acting program and received one of their coveted eight spots.
Center Court to Center Stage By John Michael McCall ‘19
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I decided to cheer for our team, and put myself on the stage.
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Lessons By Ashley Saia ‘06
Basketball is a game of constant failure…missed shots, turnovers, and giving up points to the opponent. At the high school level, if you shoot 40% you are a good shooter! That means you are missing 6 of 10 shots! The question is how do you respond? What happens if you miss a shot, or a wide open layup, or have a turnover? Basketball players are constantly confronted with responding to failure… it happens all the time and sometimes in packed gyms. We talk a lot about connecting… slapping fives, picking our teammates up off the ground, encouraging each other whether we are on the floor or on the bench. We discuss turning INTO each other, physically turning towards our teammates to receive high fives after a triumph or a mistake… we encourage each other good or bad. By coming together and supporting our teammates, we help them think outside themselves. The game of basketball moves too fast to dwell on the previous failure and we have a “next play mentality”. The best way to do that is through connection on the floor. We practice connection in the hopes that it becomes a habit. Failure allows our players to be ready to show up for their teammates when they need it.
“Failure gives us an avenue to learn.” Some lessons are hard, some are easy. You can learn with success, and you can learn with failure.
We set high goals for ourselves this past 2018-19 season, with one of them being an MCAL Championship. We had lost the previous season in the Championship Game and we committed to being better in all aspects of our game. We knew what it felt like to be in a packed gym with a championship on the line. And despite the failure last year, we now had experience of what it was going to feel like and look like.
Ashley Saia, Head Coach of Varsity Women’s Basketball and the winning team!
Unfortunately, the game began very similarly as the previous championship game, with us struggling to score and we found ourselves down double digits in the second half. This group of young ladies came together and committed to leaving it all on the floor, despite not being at our best. Our bench had energy, the players on the floor played with the utmost confidence. We fought back. The opportunity was there for everyone to turn on each other but instead we turned in, and it resulted in an MCAL Championship win! All of the lessons we learned through our failures throughout the season led to the team connecting when we needed it most. A very proud accomplishment!
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Failure The Growth Mindset By Michael Brady The number of times I have had heard someone say “I am just not a Math Person” is disheartening. A math person or not a math person is just not a thing. Everyone has difficulties in Math, or as Albert Einstein once said, “Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater.” I want my classroom to be a safe place to fail, so students can learn from it and ultimately succeed. In this way, math and sports (and politics, and so much else in life) are exceptionally similar. Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford, says, ‘How we respond to failure, and whether or not we grow from it, is shaped by our mindset. Therefore, our potential is not a fixed point, but rather our abilities can be shaped and developed by effort, good teaching, and persistence.’ With this idea in mind, I created a growth mindset poster project in my Algebra 2C course. Students were provided with a list of 100 growth mindset quotes to choose from or could choose their own and explained to the class what the quote meant to them. Then they created a visual representation to be posted in the classroom. Having these posters on the walls encourages my students to build a growth mindset; growing stronger, smarter, and more resilient with each failure, and that is more important to me than any particular math skill that they can learn in my class. Michael Brady teaches Math at Marin Catholic.
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How we respond to failure, and whether or n
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not we grow from it, is shaped by our mindset.
Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology, Stanford
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Embracing Failure By Lachlan MacLean ‘02 While I’ve been blessed with incredible teachers throughout my life, there is one that stands above them all; failure. Let me be clear, I wasn’t always so appreciative of failure. As a proud young man, it was something I dreaded, something I ran from. I would often avoid situations that had the potential for failure. What frightened me the most was the thought that if I failed at something, it meant that I was a failure. That’s because our society views failure as a reflection of a person’s shortcomings or inadequacies. To fail means you weren’t good enough to succeed. In doing so, we’ve created a culture that incentivizes being comfortable, and punishes those who take risks and attempt new endeavors. We’re building a world where people are afraid to try. Every new endeavor has the inherent possibility of success or failure. What I’ve come to learn is that in succeeding, we see where we are strong, and in failing, we are shown where we can grow. It’s in failing that we are given the precious opportunity to transform into better versions of ourselves. For that reason, failure is not something to fear but rather to embrace as a means for evolution and improvement. Imagine if George Washington quit after his first failure in command at Fort Necessity, or if Thomas Edison quit after his first attempt to create a light bulb. This nation would be robbed of its greatest leader, and our world would be a whole lot darker. I’ve missed game winning shots, faltered when speaking in front of audiences, and come up short in countless other instances where I wish I could have performed better. However, having finally learned the lessons my greatest teacher was trying to teach me, I can tell you today that I’m no longer afraid of failing, I’m afraid of not trying.
I have not failed 10,000 times.
I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work.
When I have eliminated the
ways that will not work,
I will find the way
that will work. —Thomas Edison
I dare you to fail. Lachlan MacLean ’02 graduated from Gonzaga University in 2006 with a degree in Finance and Marketing and is now an investment advisor for a local wealth management firm. He and his wife, Meredith, recently welcomed their first child, a daughter, Blair. MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 44
A Lack of Chemistry By Elise Tarrant ’07
“Nope, I’m not signing that.” Mrs. Polizzotti, MC Chemistry Teacher After receiving a B in Honors Chemistry, I requested to take any science class other than AP Chemistry during my junior year at Marin Catholic. I just didn’t enjoy Chemistry. But Mrs. Polizzotti refused to sign off of my request and was determined to “get me to love chemistry”. It did not work. I hated the class, did not do well, and received a C as a final grade. I didn’t even pass the AP exam to help earn college credit. I felt like a failure. However, a few months later I was accepted to California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo as a Kinesiology major. My dream was to become a physical therapist, and the Clinical Sciences track was the best option. Little did I know this path included one full year of regular Chemistry, one quarter of Biochemistry, and one quarter of Organic Chemistry. If you were to talk to my freshman year roommate, she would attest to the fact Chemistry was the bane of my existence that first quarter. But soon the dust came off what Mrs. Polizzotti had taught me and I started to get the hang of it. By the end of the whole series, I actually enjoyed Chemistry and found out I was quite good at it … with the grades to prove it! This was important because I needed to maintain a high undergraduate GPA to get into graduate school. Thanks to my formerly despised MC Chemistry experience, I was accepted and went on to receive my Doctorate in Physical Therapy at UCSF, and then completed my Orthopedic Residency at UCSF and am now an Orthopedic Certified Specialist.
Elise Tarrant ’07 is now an Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSF.
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It was here that I discovered my purpose of working with kids.
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RED REC By Alexandra Troia ‘19
Setbacks are difficult, especially when it involves something that you have pursued with great passion for many years. In middle school, I tried out for the volleyball team. I loved the rush of the game, the fast pace, and the camaraderie with my fellow teammates. I went to camps, played club volleyball, and worked hard to improve and catch up to the skill level of others who had been playing far longer. As a Junior, I tried out for MC’s varsity team. I didn’t make it, but was asked if I would like to play JV. I was hesitant because at it is rare for a junior at MC to play JV and I thought that might be embarrassing. However, I thought this would be a great opportunity to get better and hopefully make varsity the next year. A year later, I had a feeling of deja vu–same coach, same room, same butterflies in my stomach. However, it was not the same answer. No varsity. No JV. The coach did, however, express how much he appreciated my commitment and involvement with the volleyball program and how he wanted to keep me involved. He asked if I wanted to be the team manager and assistant coach for the freshman. He believed I would be an excellent role model for them and bring a positive energy to the team. I was not sure. I was feeling very emotional and needed to wait until my head was clear. It was then realized that I needed to put my ego aside and accept his kind offer. I thanked him for all the amazing opportunities he gave me through the years and for how he has helped me grow both as a teammate and a person. That season was anything but a failure. Rather, I created bonds with coaches that I admire and made amazing relationships with the girls I coached. It was here that I discovered my purpose of working with kids. That is my passion and what I want to do with my life. I want to change lives, inspire them, and help them develop as good and kind people.
in the 400-meters.
Alexandra Troia ‘19 attends Sonoma State University where she is pursuing a degree in early childhood studies with a concentration in early childhood education. MARIN Catholic • FALL 2019 — 48