Professor Horace Bannister was a former U.S. Congressman, a big man in every sense, and the last person you wanted critiquing your eight-minute presentation on Native American education deficits particularly when you had prepared for it in roughly four hours the night before. What he did to me in front of that classroom was harsh. What I took away from it changed the rest of my professional life. This is an essay about public failure, and the surprising rewards of surviving it.