Take a leaf out of JK Rowling’s book and failure can see you soar

With the Leaving Cert underway, thousands of teenagers are living in fear of messing up. Clodagh Finn says they should look to the wise words of JK Rowling who says failure and imagination were the makings of her.

Bestselling author JK Rowling knows better than most what global success feels like. She hit the literary jackpot twice – with the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series and as her crime-writing alter ego, Robert Galbraith.

But it was not always thus. In 2008, she told an audience of graduates during a deeply affecting commencement address at Harvard University that there were benefits in failing. And how learning those lessons was worth more than any qualification she earned.