Having rejected success as a worthy aspiration, Le Guin turned to what she considered the real preparation graduates needed: the capacity to inhabit failure. 'You will work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid.' But Le Guin's point was not to counsel despair. It was to reclaim darkness as territory. She argued that women were already foreigners in the 'self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up.' Rather than trying to succeed in that alien country, she urged them to 'explore our own' — the territory of vulnerability, weakness, helplessness, and the irrational. 'The night side of our country,' she called it, where 'no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is.'