Failure isn’t shameful – in fact, it’s the perfect reason to have an ice-cream | Emma Beddington

Unsuccessful US college applicants have started having cathartic parties to celebrate'. I think they might be on to something

High school students in the US are tackling the brutal process of college applications with rejection parties, the New York Times reported last week. At one school, students bring along a printout of their college rejections, ceremonially feed them into a shredder, then get an ice-cream; there is a prize for the most rejected. It sounds wonderful: a cathartic, collective screw you" to a broken system, using fun to salve the pain.

I wonder if owning rejection is easier in the US, where there is at least a partial sense that failure is OK; it's considered a learning opportunity and a key part of the origin story. The Silicon Valley motto fail fast, fail often" took hold because failure was seen as indicative of audacity and a willingness to try. Rejection is a particularly stinging subset of failure, but the principle remains: you took the shot; it didn't pay off; you try again.