UC Berkeley wants students to know that it’s OK to fail
BERKELEY » All of the new students arriving at UC Berkeley this week have impressive resumes; they’ve earned straight As, speak multiple languages, play several instruments and volunteer countless hours. Sometimes all at once.
But there’s one thing many of these young people aren’t necessarily good at: Failing.
“Many of them haven’t really hit failure,” said Amy Honigman, a psychologist with the school’s student health services.
It’s a reality they’re going to have to get comfortable with to succeed at Cal and at life in general, though. So as part of a revamped orientation program, Honigman and several professors, university staff and alumni will tell students about their own failures years ago and, more impor-
“Everybody struggles and there’s something about it that it’s like a condition of being human. And that’s good to know.”
— Amy Honigman, a psychologist with UC Berkeley’s student health services
tantly, how they picked up the pieces.
“Everybody struggles and there’s something about it that it’s like a condition of being human,” Honigman said. “And that’s good to know.”
The school isn’t alone in talking to students about failure. In the last decade or so, elite schools in particular have developed programs to reassure students used to getting it right that part of college is risking getting it wrong and trying again. In 2009, for instance, Stanford, drawing inspiration from Harvard, launched what would grow into The Resilience Project, a program to help students gain perspective and understand the benefit of setbacks.
Cal Professor Robert Rhew is a respected earth scientist. But as a freshman at Harvard he failed an exam in a genetics class after studying hard. “It came as a complete shock,” he recalled. “All the rules for doing well in class didn’t work.”
The old rules from high school, that is. Fast forward and Rhew swallowed his pride, got a tutor, worked on becoming an active rather than a passive learner, and passed the class. At the time, it felt like an existential threat to his sense of identity. Now, it’s a blip on a life rich with ups and downs.
Honigman got a C in her first psychology class. Now, she’s a respected psychologist. “They appreciate knowing that people with Ph.D.s and advanced degrees make mistakes,” she said.
“We don’t want the narrative to only be that you have to be perfect all the time and that’s sort of a mask you have to wear,” said James Kato, who is coordinating the program, “but rather that failure is a part of life and it’s ok that that happens to you and you move through it.”
Or, as Honigman said, resilience “is a skill that can be developed.”
Twenty years ago, Amy Wong was a freshman at Berkeley. At the time, “they didn’t talk about failure at all,” she said. Wong, who will give one of the talks, wants students to consider what makes them feel fulfilled and successful rather than trying to fit into some predetermined notion of success. Wong had a successful career in the tech industry and a wonderful family, she said, but at 29, she had a breakdown. “I had been driven all my life by the word should,” she said. “The nature of my talk is going to be about waking up to the fact that the reality of should is what makes failure a foe rather than feedback.” Now, she’s embarked on a different career as an executive coach and consultant and she “couldn’t be happier,” she said.
If students learn that they are capable of rebounding from failure, they can overcome a fear of failure, which creates space for them to take intellectual risks that can ultimately be rewarding.
“We don’t want fear of failure to limit their education,” Rhew said. Berkeley is “like this intellectual candy store” with opportunities to learn all sorts of new things, he added, and if students don’t experience that, “they’re losing out on a huge opportunity.”
Talking about failure and resilience doesn’t mean today’s college students are wimps, insist the faculty and staff participating. “College today is not like when we were kids, so to speak,” Rhew said.
Students face pressure from helicopter parents and others to succeed, and are bombarded by social media posts about what look, on the surface, like their friends’ perfect lives. In the last five to eight years, Honigman said, she’s seen an increase in anxiety among young people.
At the same time, scientists know more now. Where schools used to focus on self-esteem, research now suggests talking about self-compassion and resilience is more effective.
“I think that’s cool,” said Anika Djukic, an 18-yearold freshman from Seattle. “I’d like to hear about it.”
Djukic thinks hearing about times professors and other successful people failed will “keep me from getting discouraged” when she struggles in college, she said.
“Failing doesn’t mean that you’re inadequate or a loser,” Honigman said. “Everybody has a back story. Everybody struggles.”