4.3.2 FIXED MINDSET AND THE FEAR OFFAILURE

Fear of failure is a cousin of fear of commitment. Many of us fear putting words to paper because we feel that we are inadequate writers and that we can never write anything that is worthy of turning in to a teacher, supervisor, or judge.²⁰By putting off writing, we postpone the moment that others discover that we have been faking out people all along, and that we are not the good students or effective lawyers that people may think that we are.

Another irrational fear may lurk behind the fear of failure. If we fear that we are unable to learn, failure on an early draft means that we will fail on the final draft as well. For if we are unable to learn, there is nothing that a teacher or supervisor can do to help us to improve that “failed” first attempt, and so the bad first draft means that we are doomed to a bad final draft. Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, describes people who believe they cannot learn as having a “fixed mindset.”²¹These people believe that intelligence is fixed and limited, and if you can’t pick up knowledge or a skill immediately, you will never be able to do so. Those with a “growth mindset,” in contrast, understand that intelligence is malleable and that, if they work at it, they can increase their intelligence and learn new skills. Sadly, those with a fixed mindset are often resistant to guidance that will help them to learn, because they believe that such learning is impossible. Happily, however, you can overcome the fear of being unable to learn. Having a fixed mindset is not a fixed state of being; you can learn to have a growth mindset.

To move to a growth mindset, realize that if you were smart enough to get into law school (or smart enough to graduate from law school), you are smart enough to learn to write, and to learn how to analyze even sophisticated legal issues. You can trust me on this; I have been teaching for over 30 years, and I have seen students just like you accomplish these goals. But they didn’t do it all on the first day, or on the first draft. The ones who made the most improvement tried hard on every draft, and they saw critiques not as insults, but as opportunities. They focused more on learning the skills than on the grade they would earn.

The best tonic for fear of failure is to write early. Work on producing a draft that reflects your current capabilities, so that the learning can begin. As noted above, starting writing earlier rather than later increases the chances of success on the project as a whole. If we fear criticism from supervisors or teachers, we might try road-testing our ideas by talking them out with friends (if allowed by academic misconduct policies) or by speaking directly with the teacher or supervisor who will be judging our work.²²It is unrealistic, of course, to expect that someone can pre-approve every aspect of our writing, but by getting early feedback on some of our ideas, we can reassure ourselves that our work will meet with some approval.

Another way to deal with fear of failure is to embrace the prospect of writing a bad draft. If we write a bad draft well before the deadline, we need not fear failure because we will know that we have time to turn that failure around. The writer Anne Lamott specifically advocates writing what she calls “shitty first drafts.”²³Doing so can reduce your anxiety: If you know the draft is a bad one, you are still maintaining control over the product, and you can even agree with those who might criticize it. Using private memos can help this process as well: When you experience fear or doubt about a particular aspect of your writing, record your concerns, and be as specific as possible. For example, “I need more research on the X issue. Are there any more cases addressing second part of test?” “This sentence doesn’t make sense. I’m trying to say that the defendant’s refusal to come to an agreement was legally significant.” The private memos can help your fear of failure by allowing you to acknowledge areas where you need guidance; it can help your revision process by targeting the aspects of the draft that need the most work.