Learning Through Failure

Today, the Youth Media Team were really excited to have the opportunity to interview Fintan O’Toole. Bridin and Jack managed to find a quiet space, pressed ‘record’ and had a wonderful, relaxed chat with one of Ireland’s most passionate journalists.

Photo Fintan

Twenty minutes later, they had it in the bag, took a photo and Fintan left for pastures new. Sadly, when we looked down at the device which held all of his words of wisdom, it was crashing. Crashing hard. Almost in tears, we struggled to find the file, to recover it but sadly it wasn’t to be. The interview was gone.

Earlier, Fintan had spoken about the importance of learning from failure. So here’s what we learnt today:

1. Always have a back-up plan. If we had been recording with a second mic or device we’d have secured the interview.

2. It’s ok to fail. We conducted many, many interviews today. One was bound to go wrong – we were just sorry it was our guest speaker. We were gutted but we were also more careful what device we used for the rest of the day.

3. Even though the technology failed, we still had the experience of interviewing Fintan. We can’t have that conversation again, but at least we had it once!

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