Screw Up Night 2022

Author: Ayda, L10

Editor: İpek, L11

RC Social Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Creativity (SEIC) Office held this school year’s first “Screw-Up Night”, which opened space for the RC community to listen and share screw-up stories.

Screw-Up Nights make it okay to be vulnerable in a learning environment. It gives the opportunity to anyone who wants to share their own story and leave the room knowing that their story has been heard. It is also a great experience to simply hold space for and listen to other people’s stories of failure.

In this particular event, there was a huge crowd was waiting for the doors to open. A great number of snacks were there in the corner and the place was set up to create a welcoming atmosphere with dim lighting and music. Once everyone was seated, we started our event with a check-in question: “How do you feel right here and now?”. By this question, participants had time to connect with themselves and with each other for a moment.

We started the night with our first guest speaker Mr. Ringwald. He took us through his own screw-up. In his own words, he said that he wishes he hadn’t screwed up, but he did screw up, so he keeps this failure close to him. Next, we had a guest speaker from L11, Eren. With his storytelling, he succeeded to make everyone in the room laugh and enjoy the moment. Then, Ms. Ready left us with tears with her story on her relationship with her family. After this moment filled with various emotions, L11 student Hilmican, our biology teacher Mrs. Tingleff and our English teacher Ms. Dunne were next to share their stories.

After the guest speakers, it was time for the Open-Mic, which was the time when everyone in the room was free to share their own screw-up stories with this community.

After listening to the open mic stories, we asked the participants to share their takeaways from this experience on a sticky note, which are now on the walls of Rabbit Hole. We thank all participants for their positive takeaways and for sharing those with us. Here are some of these takeaways:

• “It was really relaxing”
• “It was intimate”
• “It was a lot of fun and authenticity in one room.”
• “It was a really enjoyable and amazing environment”
• “There’s always another way.”
• “Thank you for creating such a safe environment.”

We would like thank all of the speakers for sharing their stories and all the participants for joining us in the first SEIC event of the year. If you couldn’t make it to this one, don’t worry. SEIC Office is planning to organize more Screw-Up Nights this year. Stay tuned!