Wesleyan Resilience Project
The mission of Wesleyan Resilience Project is to create opportunities for reflection, understanding, and creative engagement with success, failure, and resilience. By sharing our stories, by considering the importance and growth potential inherent in our challenging moments, we grow as a community.
The Wesleyan Resilience Project (WRP) encourages members of the Wesleyan community to grapple with questions like:
- How do I define success in my life?
- What makes me feel fulfilled and how does that impact my understanding of success?
- What am I working toward and why?
- Am I reaching toward my own version of success or a version that has been imposed upon me?
- Where do my beliefs about success and failure come from?
- Is failure essential to success?
- How do I become more resilient in moments of challenge?
- How do I respond to failure or the fear of failure?
- What does it mean to be a good, successful, even excellent student and human being?
Why is Resilience Important?
Resilience enables you to make the most of your opportunities at Wesleyan and not let the fear of failure hold you back from trying new things, whether speaking up in class, writing for the Argues or applying for a fellowship. It will enable you to try something that you might not be very good at, but you want to experience anyway. Resilience enables you to approach a disappointing grade as an opportunity to grow and learn.
Please read these five narratives from current Wesleyan students regarding their own experiences with success, failure and resilience.
We would love anonymous stories of how you grew from a difficult moment. By opening up this dialogue, you are bravely creating a space in which it's important to rethink failure and success. These stories will be shared on a site dedicated to resilience at Wesleyan.
Campus Resources and Initiatives
When you are grappling with a setback, it is important to self-advocate and reach out for help. These campus resources are particularly mindful regarding success and failure and have been involved in different initiatives and programs to support resilience.
These are some recommended readings that focus on resilience, perfectionism, fear, impostor syndrome and the importance of failure.
Any questions or ideas? Please be in touch with Jennifer Wood, Dean for the Class of 2027, at jpwood@wesleyan.edu.