Failure and Vulnerability Panel

We hope to decrease the stigma our department faces regarding failure and vulnerability through a panel of highly respected people and through small group and anonymous discussions afterwards. We also hope that you will reflect on your own relationships with failure and vulnerability in this event. Open to all CSE students, staff, and faculty.

You’ve probably heard multiple times that failure is a great opportunity and it isn’t something to be afraid or ashamed of. However, CSE has developed a culture of being extremely ambitious, and handling failure among a community of such high-performing peers is particularly difficult. Our high-achieving community can lead to lots of us feeling inadequate and that we don’t belong here. Often in CSE we overhear people talking about their accomplishments, but rarely do we talk about our experiences with failure (and, shocking as it may be, every single one of us has failed at some point).

If you would like to practice being vulnerable, visit here to find the handout that we sent out to help you reflect on the event and your own failure and vulnerability experiences.