jlrankin@ksu.edu posted on July 02, 2019 16:19
Saujani, R. (2019). Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder. NY: Currency.
Book review by Jessica Hansen-Moench, Iowa State University, jahansen@iastate.edu
In Saujani’s (2019) book, Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder, she encourages women to take on new challenges, learn from failure, and to continually pursue their dreams. Saujani starts with her own story of failure when she ran for public office and didn’t just lose, but “got clobbered, winning just 19 percent of the vote” (2019, p. 2). However, Saujani talks about how she learned from that failure and came back stronger and more determined to make a difference than ever. Advisors deal with students who are both failing, and scared of failing on a daily basis. Saujani’s story can easily be used to help students to see how failure can be a positive learning and growing experience.
Brave, Not Perfect is organized in an easy-to-read layout that gives the background on how girls in the United States are trained for perfection and how that plays a role in women not taking as many chances in life due to the fear of failure. Saujani (2019) then goes on to talk about how times are changing and women today are starting to find their voices and are not trying as hard to please everyone. This section is called “Brave is the New Black” (p. 85). Finally, the last portion of the book covers how to be brave. There are tips about creating a mindset that promotes bravery, learning to “say no,” and finally, how to survive a failure and come back stronger.
This book fits within the NACADA core competency of empowerment (NACADA, 2017). Advisers can use strategies in this book to help encourage advisees to take risks and recognize their full potential. This book can also help advisers learn to take more risks in their own career and apply new and innovative advising techniques in their day-to-day practice. The book could be a motivational tool to help advisers take the risk they have been thinking about for years. Finally, Brave, Not Perfect fits within the NACADA Academic Advising Core Competencies Model under the Relational Component R6 (NACADA, 2017). Brave, Not Perfect is all about making hard decisions, planning, and setting goals for oneself. Simply reading this book will help anyone to gain motivation to make a change in their life.
References:
NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. (2017). NACADA academic advising core competencies model. Retrieved from https://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Pillars/CoreCompetencies.aspx
NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. (2017). NACADA core values of academic advising. Retrieved from https://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Pillars/CoreValues.aspx
Saujani, R. (2019). Brave, Not Perfect: Fear Less, Fail More, and Live Bolder. NY: Currency.