Journalism professor K.C. Cole encourages her students to embrace failure.

“Question everything,” the award-winning science reporter and author tells them. “Take risks. Fall on your face. Notice everything. Pay attention. See that everything is an evolving story.”

Taking her own advice is one reason Cole has attained so much professional success.

“To be a good journalist is to notice things and find out what’s true,” she says. “That’s what makes a good scientist and an artist, too – people who notice things and bring them to other people’s attention and get to the core of what life is all about.”

She tells her students that being a young reporter isn’t easy, but with the proper training they’ll be able to learn quickly. Science can be especially tricky at the beginning.

“It takes a lot of expertise to cover science because you can be fooled,” she says. “The only way to get around that in the beginning is talking to older colleagues, having a sounding board, and knowing who to talk to.”