Reflections on "Failure Week"

"This article made a great deal of noise, and all the papers reprinted it"

Chapter 5

Seeing as me not writing for a while could be interpreted as "neglecting" my cyber following (hello, you at the back there with the tinfoil hat) I just thought I would set down a couple of musings on the previous week.


I don't know whether any of you have heard of my school's latest semi-publicity drive, an event known as "failure week", which has, for some reason, got rather a lot of press in respected newspapers, a situation I can only attribute to the presence of a couple of old girls working behind the scenes. The idea is to emphasise that failure (or, at least, initial failure) can be a positive thing, that it is important to take risks, that a life lived cautiously is a life half-lived, and that it is most importantly our reaction to failure that makes us overall a successful person.

Aside from the positive press, the scheme has come under criticism. Sam Leith, in the Evening Standard, has likened it to "Milkmaid Week in the Palace of Versailles", pointing out that graduates of Wimbledon High School are very unlikely to experience any serious, crushing long-term failure, in comparison to schools where "every week is failure week". I'm not denying this view has a good deal of truth in it, but  Mr Leith, as an Eton old boy and an Oxford graduate, should probably be informed that those standing in the Hall of Mirrors shouldn't throw stones.

Actually, I think it's a very good idea. Yeah, ok, all it amounts to in practice is a couple of motivational assemblies and a thinking exercise to do with blue smarties in which we weren't actually given any physical smarties to eat. And the excuse of "Sorry I didn't do my homework, Miss, but it is failure week" somehow didn't go down too well. But the principle of a positive reaction to failure seems to me a good one. The story of J.K. Rowling and how she triumphed over everything, which was held up to us as an example, has always been an inspiration to me as an aspiring author.

Positive reaction to failure, the sudden phenomenal success of a struggling writer...does anyone see where I'm going with this?

Or am I just desperately scrabbling around for relevance here?

FAIL.