Smith College, a private women’s liberal arts college in Massachusetts, teaches its students about failure. In fact, the administration calls it “Failing Well.” Students and faculty write about their failures often, and they are printed out for everyone to see. In an article in the New York Times in 2017 written by Jessica Bennett, the school touts the program as a cure for what many students suffer from: depression caused by a feeling of having to be perfect. “What we’re trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning, it’s the feature,” Rachel Simmons, a leadership development specialist at Smith, told Bennett. “It’s not something that should be locked out of the learning experience. For many of our students—those who have had to be almost perfect to get accepted into a school like Smith—failure can be an unfamiliar experience. When it happens, it can be crippling.”
Crippling. That is a good word to describe the paralyzing fear that takes over in those perfectionistic episodes we know and do not love. But I do love this professor Rachel Simmons, who herself dropped out of a top-notch school and was told she was an embarrassment. Oh, that word “embarrassment” again. In her program, according to the Times, the students sign a permission slip to fail. It says, “You are hereby authorized to screw up, bomb, or fail at one or more relationships, hookups, friendships, texts, exams, extracurricular or any other choices associated with college … and still be a totally worthy, utterly excellent human.”
Students put this quote on their dorm room walls. I want to send this to every college freshman that I can.
“We are talking a lot more about the advantages of failing. Failing upward,” Bennett writes, is now an acceptable term, especially in the start-up community, with many tech entrepreneurs crediting failure for helping them eventually succeed in business. But the article explains that in the high-stakes academic world, many students still can’t handle even minor disappointments, like getting an A minus in a class, or not getting the dorm they requested. Some of these students are so afraid to fail that they don’t take any risks at all, at a time where they should be taking quite a few.
Smith is not the only college addressing this problem. Cornell, Stanford, Penn State, along with a number of universities around the country are having to teach students life skills to deal with the disappointments in life.
So why are all these students so stressed out? Researchers say part of the reason lies in childrearing. If you grew up with a helicopter parent or are one yourself (if you’ll admit it), then you basically are not prepared (or have not prepared your child) for the real world. In the “Everyone gets a trophy” world today, not many have experienced failure by the age of eighteen. And if you are the star student or athlete in high school and then are put in an environment where everyone excels, it could set you up for a perfectionistic breakdown. Colleges are increasingly finding this happening.
Students are unprepared for the demand of college; they’re unprepared to get a B or to not make the travel team in their given sport.
So what to do? Kick your child when they are down, tell them that they’re losers, to help them make it through the college years? Not exactly, but don’t sugarcoat things. Don’t make things easy for them. Do get involved if needed, especially if it’s a serious issue with academics, drugs or alcohol, or mental health. If you’re the one leaving for college, realize that this is the time to try and go it on your own a little. Your parents will be there if you fall, but it’s okay to not involve them in the minor scrapes that often come up in college life. In the end, it’s four years of dramatic growth for both student and parent, filled with failure as well as success.
Enjoy the ride.