Give me all the external validation
Or... how Substack is the standardized test I didn't know I needed. A new preojct from Rachel Berg Scherer of Midwest Writing & Editing.
Edited to add that, yes, I see that typo up there. But in the interest of beginning this project preojct of documenting failure as authentically as possible, I am not going to change it.
Welcome, friends!
You’re here because you have crossed paths with Rachel Berg Scherer of Midwest Writing & Editing. More than likely, those interactions have been filled with grand successes. Welcome to the space where I explore all the ways that is NOT true.
I’m so glad you’re here.
It’s exam day
This is my office today: a cold, windowless, nondescript gymnasium, filled with 29 high school scholars. Some nervous. Some terrified. Some who started sleeping as soon as they got here, so I’m not entirely sure who made them come in the first place.
The sight of today’s office likely sends you in one of two directions: filled with the same nervous anxiety shared by most students in this room. Or filled with more than a little bit of envy that you don’t also get to show just how smart you are so someone else can give you the external validation of a digital tap on the head by way of a high score.
I fall squarely into the latter. One hundred percent envious of standardized testing. Mine has been a life filled to the brim with a desire for all the external validation. Where has it led me? Keep reading…
This is a space of failure…and validation
While I absolutely love me a good standardized test and the external validation it brings, I know that her dirty little cousin is outright failure. Public failure. Big, spectacular, public-eye failure. And I’ve seen a whole lot of it.
The wonderful old expression, “It ain’t braggin if it’s true” has been attributed to many people who seemed to have nothing but outward success…Mohammed Ali, Babe Ruth, perhaps even Yogi Berra. But Mohammad Ali was still knocked down four times. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times! And Yogi Berra may have been hit in the head one too many times at spring training, because he’s also credited with gems like, “No one ever goes there anymore; the lines are too long.”
The me who once shone in the world of windowless standardized testing where failure was not an option now thrives at the knock-outs, the strike-outs, and the just plain flubs. I am so eager to share all my life’s failures in this space so that we can all learn together. In other words, thank you for joining me on this very on-brand process for an aging millennial who has been blessed with a good deal of therapy.
We are all such awesome failures
Fully human person that I am, I fail in countless areas. Diet and exercise? More like cheese and wine. Less screen time? Give me doom-scrolling for days.
Running for school board, back in my home town to which I swore I would never return? Stay tuned for a whole host of layers of failure on that one.
The awesome thing about failure is—cliché as it may sound—we do learn so much more from the stumbles and the trips than we do from all the times we ace the test or score the winning basket at the buzzer. We learn plenty about ourselves and what we’re able to handle, but we also learn more than we realized we even needed to know about everyone around us.
Come fail with me!
I hope you’ll join me on this journey of beautiful, transformative failure. Subscribe to get a front-row seat to all my most epic fails (because, really, all failure is spectacularly epic) and all my unpacking.
Let’s inspire each other with our most transformative, epic fails! Welcome to this space.