Lessons Learned
Outi Foote
Throughout my time in middle and high school, my value of ambition has led me to take the most challenging courses available at my school. In my community, my value of commitment has allowed me to serve at my church for the past five years. These learned values have molded me into the person I am today and will continue to guide me as I pursue my goals in life. It is because of these values and the way they were instilled in me that I have decided to pursue a career as a surgeon; I know it is through the guidance of these values and the people who first showed them to me that I will be able to achieve this goal.
In his essay, Zerubabel shares with the admissions committee the values he has learned from observing his family members. Zerubabel connects these observations to how he applies his values of ambition and commitment to everyday life. Through his reflection and analysis, the admissions committee is able to understand how Zerubabel would contribute his personal qualities and skills to our campus community.
Lessons learned (American English) or lessons learnt (British English) are experiences distilled from past activities that should be actively taken into account in future actions and behaviors.
There are several definitions of the concept. The one used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),[1] European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reads as follows:
U.S. Army Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) since 1985 covers in detail the Army Lessons Learned Program and identifies, collects, analyzes, disseminates, and archives lessons and best practices.
In the military field, conducting a Lessons learned analysis requires a leader-led after-actions debriefing. These debriefings require the leader to extend the lessons-learned orientation of the standard after-action review. He uses the event reconstruction approach or has the individuals present their own roles and perceptions of the event, whichever best fits the situation and time available.[5]
Ten weeks earlier, I had said the N-word on a public channel before an esports race. In an instant, my career was shattered. I was rightly suspended by NASCAR and fired from my job with a top-tier team. I jeopardized the livelihoods of the crew members who had poured their careers into building me fast racecars. My fans were upset. In an instant, I turned a lot of lives upside down and destroyed my own reputation.
Anyone who has massively let people down knows what the worst part of all this is. As I sat in that classroom, less than two hours from my previous, comfortable life, I looked across at a group of people who had once supported me and were now completely and totally disappointed.
Last October, Jysir celebrated with me and my team in victory lane when I won the NASCAR race at Dover. He was one of the many people I'd hurt, and he wanted to know why this happened. So did his mom. And they didn't just want to hear it from me over the phone or on a Zoom call. It needed to be face-to-face. I was honest with them. We talked about difficult subjects for more than two hours, and I spent a lot of time listening. Michelle educated me on the journey of Black people in America and the ugly history of racism and derogatory slurs. I offered my apologies to Jysir, his mom and the Martins for the pain I caused. Instead of the anger I expected, what I got in return was empathy.
Auto racing is my passion. During the NASCAR off-season, I've sometimes competed overseas. On one of these trips, I was around a group that used the N-word casually, almost like a greeting. Of course, it doesn't matter where this happened, how the word was used or what the people around me did. The fact is that the word was said in my presence and I allowed it to happen unchecked. I was ignorant enough to think it was OK, and on the night of the esports event, I used the word similarly to how I'd heard it. As I write this, I realize how ridiculous, horrible and insensitive it all sounds.
I'm half Japanese. My parents are an interracial couple who have gotten disapproving stares and been made to feel uncomfortable just for being together. And all of a sudden, they were being asked why their 27-year-old Asian-American son said something racist. My maternal grandparents were held in an internment camp during World War II. There's absolutely no excuse for my ignorance.
My mom and dad's disappointment really affected me. Trust me when I say that they did not raise my sister and I this way. But even though I let them down in a particularly hurtful manner, they still supported me when I most needed them. I was, and will always be, grateful for how they've helped me navigate the last five months of my life.
But as much as my parents have always believed in me, there's no one who holds me to a higher standard than I do. And I had failed. I wanted to hide. I shut down my social media accounts. In the time of COVID-19, wearing a mask in public actually made me feel more comfortable. It wasn't healthy at all. I needed to take back control.
The first lesson: The N-word is not mine to use. It cannot be part of my vocabulary. The history of the word is connected to slavery, injustice and trauma that is deep and has gone on for far too long. I truly didn't say the word with the intention of degrading or demeaning another person, but my ignorance ended up insulting an entire community of people who, in the year 2020, still have to fight for justice and equality. When I look back at these last few months and see all the protests and unrest in our country, and the pain Black people are going through, it hurts to know that what I said contributed to that pain.
NASCAR has a zero-tolerance policy on this type of behavior. When they suspended me, I received a plan that started with mandatory sensitivity training and went from there. I'm in regular contact with them, and I've learned and grown as I've gone through the program. I hope to race in NASCAR again.
In early May, I traveled to Minnesota and volunteered in a food drive organized by Tony Sanneh, a retired pro soccer player who has his own charitable foundation. After the death of George Floyd, I went back to Minneapolis and joined Tony and his leadership team at the memorial that had been set up. We went around to areas of the community that had been affected. I asked them why people would destroy their own neighborhoods. Their response was eye-opening: "When people haven't been accepted by their community, they don't have any attachment to it."
In all these experiences and conversations, there's been a common and unexpected response. Everyone I've talked to was fully aware of the mistake I made and they still chose to invest their time and energy into my growth as a person. Don't get me wrong, these have not been easy conversations. One of the toughest I had was with Mike Metcalf, an African-American crew member who was on my NASCAR team for many years. I've worked with Mike since I started in NASCAR, and disappointing him was the same as letting down family.
I've received a lot of straight talk from Mike and others since April. But what gives me hope and humbles me is how so many people have opened their doors to lift up someone who probably doesn't deserve it and to share perspectives I should've sought on my own a long time ago.
After I said the N-word, anger came at me from all angles. Being labeled a racist has hurt the most, but I brought that on myself. What I didn't expect, though, were all the people who, despite their disappointment in what I did, made the choice to not give up on me. It motivates me to repay their faith by working harder, not giving up on myself, and making sure something positive comes from the harm I caused.
For far too long, I was a part of a problem that's much larger than me. I fully admit that losing my job and being publicly humiliated was how I came to understand this. But in the aftermath, I realized that my young kids will one day be old enough to learn about what their daddy said. I can't go back and change it, but I can control what happens from here on out.
At the end of each Making Magic article, I post the latest episodes of my Drive to Work podcast. I have a recurring series on my podcast called "Lessons Learned" where I go through every set for which I led or co-led the design and talk about what I learned from the experience. This year, I started writing articles for each lesson, complete with links to podcasts for readers hoping to learn more. Here are my five previous "Lessons Learned" articles:
From time to time, I lead a design and learn something important that I didn't know. While I had done a lot of individual top-down card designs, Innistrad was the first full top-down set where I led the design. And it wasn't just any type of top-down set; it was one based on a genre (gothic horror). I had known the importance of resonance (it's a frequent theme in Making Magic), but I hadn't quite realized how potent it was to tap into story elements that players already knew. There's an existing emotional bond players have formed with certain types of stories and story elements that's very powerful and leads to designs that are clearly and instantly understandable.
The moment I finished the Innistrad design, I was eager to find another genre to build a set around. At the time, I was interested in finding something fantasy adjacent. Over the years, we've experimented with genre themes further away from the core of the game, but this was early in our genre exploration. I made a list of potential options, and at the top of my list was fairy tales. Fairy tales had two huge advantages. One, they basically took place in a fantasy setting. They require kingdoms with royalty and witches and faeries and dragons and magical spells. Two, fantasy is a universally known genre. Part of that stems from its prevalence in children's entertainment, but the stories themselves have become archetypal to the point that they show up all the time in popular culture. For example, I learned that the average American in their lifespan will have seen ten different movies with the plot of Cinderella. I was convinced fairy tales were the perfect concept to build a plane around.
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