"The Failure Monologues" Launch a Project to Explore and Normalize Failure
November 6, 2025
It was standing room only as students, faculty, and staff gathered in the Dorothy Vernon Room of New Dorm on a Wednesday evening in November to hear a series of speakers. They hadn’t come to hear about their successes, though, but rather their failures.
Jennifer Prudencio from Career and Civic Engagement shares reflections on failure.
The Failure Monologues Series: Part I invited Michelle Francl from the Department of Chemistry, Jennifer Prudencio from Career and Civic Engagement, Claire Scanlan from Athletics, and Catharine Slusar from Theater to share deeply personal stories about a time they failed.
This wasn’t a TED Talk, José Vergara, associate professor of Russian and leader of the new Institute of Failure, assured the assembled crowd. The speakers wouldn’t be talking about how a mistake or misstep propelled them on to something greater.
“We're not interested in their many successes,” Vergara said. “We want to sit with that moment of failure from the past and to understand it as a natural element in our lives.”
Students listen to the speakers at The Failure Monologues Series.
From not making the roster for a championship soccer game to forgetting to bring a major prop onstage in a play — on the night it was being recorded — the speakers each stood for five to 10 minutes and shared their stories, how it weighed on them, the embarrassment and shame they felt in the moment, and how it reverberated over the years.
“When I think about failure, the emotion that comes to mind is embarrassment,” Slusar said. “But the good news is that I still did theater after that, and that you can be humiliated, embarrassed, and ashamed, and still get up the next day and do the show again.”
The topic of failure is something that doesn’t get talked about enough in academia, said Vergara. “But it seems to us that it’s something that students often struggle with, and can sort of scare them, make them less able or willing to take risks and to explore alternatives in their work.”
The role of the Institute of Failure is to dig into and investigate failure while also normalizing it. A website was set up to collect examples of failure from the public and has already received a few submissions of crafts gone wrong, as well as rejection letters — including two that were submitted by President Wendy Cadge.
“We want to sit with that moment of failure from the past and to understand it as a natural element in our lives.”
José Vergara
“The prospect of failure can be paralyzing, and our students often express this fear,” said Dean Richie Gebauer, who worked with Vergara on the Institute. “The Institute of Failure aims to normalize failure on our campus, recognizing it in all its forms as a vital component of growth.”
Vergara is also exploring an exhibition in partnership with Special Collections, more Failure Monologues, and creating a typology of failure.
“It seems to me that failure is a part of any kind of project, aspect of life,” he said, “and rather than resisting it, we should, if not embrace it, at least appreciate it, understand it better, and hopefully, through that, have a healthier relationship with it.”
To help model that it is normal — and even OK — to fail, Vergara recruited faculty and staff from a variety of departments to share their stories at the event.
Hearing that they aren’t alone in these experiences and feelings seemed to resonate with the students who attended. As a writer, Lee Cheeseman ’27 has experienced rejection, but “knowing that people whose work I really admire and respect have gone through the same process that I have, and come out the other side of it, I think, is really important.”
Michelle Francl at The Failure Monologues Series.
Prudencio told the room that just before the event, she had been talking with Francl. “Michelle said, you know, mine still stings,” Prudencio said. “I said, 'mine, too.”'
Francl shared her story of “zombie failure”: a failing grade that came back to haunt her again, and again, then again.
“And maybe that's the thing about failure,” she said, “is it continues to be a little bit of a sting all the time.”
Genesis Williams ’29, a student of Francl’s, asked the speakers if their experience with failure influenced how they work with students. Williams suspected it did. She had recently received a worse grade on a chemistry midterm than she had on a previous test.
José Vergara takes questions at the event while President Cadge listens.
“But Dr. Francl highlighted how, even though I did worse overall, you can see my growth in the answers and how I approach things,” she said. “It really made me think this is part of why she does that and how she approaches her teaching.”
The participating professors, staff, and deans all reassured students that it is OK to be vulnerable, and that failure is not only universal, but also an important part of the learning process.
“Like the speakers were saying, I sort of have an association between failing and shame,” said Josie Habiby ’29, another student of Francl’s. “I’m often scared to go to my professors and say, ‘I’m having a hard time with this.’ But I think when people talk about it and they are willing to share, there is less shame associated with this and therefore I’m more willing and able to go to people and say, ‘this is what I’m struggling in and I need help.’”
The Institute of Failure
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