- Sep 2023
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Researchers say it’s a complicated interplay of child-rearing and culture: years of helicopter-parenting and micromanaging by anxious parents. “This is the generation that everyone gets a trophy,”
This generation always got a participation trophy so nobody ever feels like they lose so nobody truly experienced failure
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“Sometimes it’s hard not to take each and every rejection letter as a failure, but I’m trying to stay positive.”
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“It’s when we’re like, ‘I have three tests tomorrow.’ And then someone’s like, ‘I have five tests tomorrow, and all I’ve eaten is 5-hour Energy, and my dog is sick.’”
For some reason, having the hardest time is admirable. It's competitive suffering or competitive stress.
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“There’s this idea that I’m not worthy if I’m not stressed and overwhelmed,” said Stacey Steinbach, a residential life coordinator at Smith. “And in some sense to not be stressed is a failing.”
If I'm not always working hard, I'm not maximizing my time and therefore failing
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But here, everybody’s special. So nobody is special.”
Students are familiar with being the best and the brightest so when grouped with a lot of people who were also the best and the brightest, they start to feel average.
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failure fund, a series of $150 to $1,000 grants for students who want to pursue a creative endeavo
Davidson College is letting students simply just send whatever project they want to fail and learn from
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Success-Failure Project at Harvard, which features stories of rejection; the Princeton Perspective Project, encouraging conversation about setbacks and struggles; Penn Faces
Many more attempts to destigmatize failure
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“It was an attempt to normalize struggle,”
Universities attempt to make a change
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the lack of coping skills — and what mental health data had shown for some time, including, according to the American College Health Association, an increase in depression and anxiety, overwhelming rates of stress and more demand for counseling services than campuses can keep up with.
The inability to accept failure is causing students so many problems
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We’re talking about students showing up in residential life offices distraught and inconsolable when they score less than an A-minus. Ending up in the counseling center after being rejected from a club.
Some students are so focused on not failing that they forget that failing and growing from it is the most important part to succeed
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But while the idea of “failing upward” has become a badge of honor in the start-up world — with blog posts, TED talks, even industry conferences — students are still focused on conventional metrics of achievement, campus administrators say.
There is some embracing of failure but there is still a deeply rooted focus on not failing in students
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“For years, I thought it would ruin me,”
Example of a high achiever failing and being completely discombobulated by it
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“What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning, it’s the feature,” said Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist in Smith’s Wurtele Center for Work and Life and a kind of unofficial “failure czar” on campus
Change the connotation that failure is bad into failure tells you what you need to work on.
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The presentation is part of a new initiative at Smith, “Failing Well,” that aims to “destigmatize failure.”
Big Point - destigmatize failure
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So to see these failures being talked about openly, for me I sort of felt like, ‘O.K., this is O.K., everyone struggles.’”
These setbacks gave rising junior Carrie Lee Lancaster relief by knowing that everyone struggles
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high test scores and perhaps a varsity letter consent to having their worst setbacks put on wide display.
These women are high achievers and told everyone their worst setbacks
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the worst failures of their peers projected onto a large screen.
Intro starts with a story about a college putting their students' worst failures on screen and some examples
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