# How to stop fearing mistakes and start celebrating them | Hannah Sabo | TEDxBodø

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ9asf46Pdg
Recap page: https://rapidrecap.app/video/jJ9asf46Pdg
Generated: 2026-01-29T21:33:31.907+00:00

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## Quick Overview

Hannah Sabo transforms the fear of making mistakes into an asset by reframing them as seeds for growth or bugs requiring debugging, a perspective she developed after struggling with physics and later teaching it, ultimately concluding that how we frame and react to mistakes determines whether we stop trying or gain deeper understanding.

**Key Points:**
- Hannah Sabo initially feared making mistakes in college physics, which caused her to lose confidence and become scared to share her ideas, despite eventually earning a physics degree and PhD.
- As a teaching assistant, Sabo realized that curriculum designers intentionally drew out common student misconceptions, viewing correcting mistakes as an "expected natural part of the learning process."
- Students often felt they could not trust their intuition in physics because their real-world experience (like predicting a bowling ball lands first) conflicted with simplified physics models (where objects land simultaneously without air resistance).
- The instructor challenged Sabo to find the "kernel of correctness" in incorrect student ideas, leading Sabo to realize that "ideas could be seeds. Mistakes could be seeds. It would just take time to grow and nurture them."
- In computer programming, mistakes manifest as bugs, and the process of debugging—reproducing the error, investigating, and trying new fixes—is expected and viewed as a learning opportunity.
- Sabo advocates that when a mistake occurs, individuals should ask, "What's going on here? Why did this happen? We get reflective and we get creative. We fix it and we move on."

**Context:** Hannah Sabo recounts her personal journey from being terrified of making mistakes in her initial college physics course to becoming a PhD in physics education research, driven by the realization that mistakes are crucial for learning. Her experience teaching physics revealed that students often distrust their intuition because the simplified models taught in physics conflict with their everyday observations, prompting a shift in her pedagogical approach toward nurturing misconceptions rather than simply replacing them.

## Detailed Analysis

The presentation centers on reframing mistakes from sources of fear and failure into valuable learning opportunities, a concept rooted in Sabo's own academic struggles and subsequent teaching career. Sabo initially felt incompetent in physics due to frequent errors, but accepting a TA position forced her to confront these struggles. She discovered that effective curriculum design incorporates anticipated student mistakes as part of the learning process, exemplified by the magnet-cutting thought experiment where initial assumptions lead to the discovery of magnetic domains. A major turning point occurred when students exhibited cognitive dissonance, distrusting their real-world intuition when physics predictions contradicted their experience (e.g., predicting a bowling ball lands first due to gravity but stating the feather lands first because they assume they are always wrong in physics). Guided by an instructor, Sabo learned to seek the truth within incorrect ideas, viewing them as seeds that need nurturing rather than confrontation. This philosophy extends to technical fields like programming, where errors are called 'bugs,' and debugging is an expected skill that requires reflection and creativity to fix the code. Ultimately, Sabo posits that whether in physics or cooking, mistakes are inevitable; the critical factor is adopting a mindset that uses errors as chances to investigate, fix, and grow into more sophisticated understanding, removing the stigma of failure.

### Initial Struggle and Revelation

- Fear of mistakes in college physics led to lost confidence
- Eventually earned a PhD in physics education research
- Learned that we can change how we react to mistakes

### Pedagogy of Mistakes in Physics

- Worksheets were designed to draw out and fix common misconceptions
- Students experienced cognitive dissonance when real-world expectations conflicted with simplified physics laws
- Instructor challenged Sabo to find the "kernel of correctness" in incorrect ideas

### Reframing Mistakes as Growth

- Ideas and mistakes function as seeds that need time to grow into sophisticated ideas
- The feather and bowling ball example shows how initial incorrect ideas lead to learning about air resistance when refined

### Mistakes in Programming (Bugs)

- Errors manifest as error messages or unexpected results, signaling the need to investigate
- Debugging is the expected skill of fixing code error-free or more efficiently
- Making bugs is viewed as a learning opportunity requiring reflection and creativity

### Conclusion and Application

- Mistakes are crucial to learning; framing them as seeds or bugs allows fixing and moving forward
- Encourages the audience to try new things and make mistakes without fear