Rejection hurts (and not only in academia)

In academia, rejection is a structural, inevitable component of our professional lives. As a scholar, you always try to come up with something that you will offer to the judgement of others. In return, you expect respect, publication, funding, jobs, you name it. The structure of our work is such that we leave the door open for judgement - and rejection. Simply because of this structure, it is nearly impossible to expect that throughout one’s career, rejection will not become a significant part of it. In the best case scenario, we get used to it, we develop a “thick skin” and just carry on. In the worst case scenario, it crushes us and discourages us from pursuing a career we have chosen.

In both cases, however, people often suffer in silence. Despite some positive changes in how we talk about it, rejection is not normalized; it is still perceived as a sign of failure, of some deficiency, a crisis that makes one question one’s life choices and self-esteem. This is not a healthy set of structural conditions: being squeezed inside a system where rejection is inevitable, it is still something that takes a toll and is not a comfortable topic to discuss, even with colleagues who are going through similar situations.

We need to normalize rejection. Only those who don’t put their work out into the world don’t get rejected. The pain and stigma of rejection should not stop us from presenting our work and trying to claim our place in academia. But the pain and the stigma are real.

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Why don’t we like to talk about rejection?

Intuitively, the desire to avoid looking vulnerable and trying to project an image of successful professional is the main reason for people hiding their rejections. Just look at LinkedIn with its “thrilled to announce” genre - and the critique of it that also became quite commonplace. I think even LinkedIn is slowly moving away from being just that type of discourse. But it’s difficult to blame people for whom their work is a huge part of their identity for feeling so connected to what they do, write, and produce; it comes at a cost though: they perceive success and failures at work as a reflection of their qualities as a person. I think it’s good to be so non-alienated from work, and I don’t believe in advice to remember that “It’s just work” (doesn’t work for me). But this non-alienation comes with risks.

The conflation of personal and work identity is not the only reason though. There’s also a cognitive bias in learning from success. I learned from the article “Hidden Failures” by Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach that, in addition to protecting our self-esteem and positive public image, we tend to - erroneously - believe that learning from success is better than learning from failures. We share our positive experiences because we think others can learn more from what to do than from what not to do. I’m guilty of that with this Substack: I decided to start writing about my successful process of obtaining research funding, but not about my less successful feats.

Apparently, we also tend to forget or dismiss negative feedback; perhaps not to be too depressed for too long? I suspect it’s a psychological mechanism that allows us not to go insane, but it’s sad that it can also potentially limit our ability to improve and learn.

There are already many posts and advice online about dealing with rejection, in general and in academia specifically. I’m not going to repeat them here (I’ll add some links below). Instead, I would like to reflect on something else - the systemic reasons why rejection hurts so much, especially in academia, and how we can address them as a community.

We seem to still believe in meritocracy

Even though there’s so much discourse now on how the academic system is broken - skewed by patriarchal and colonial systems to favor some creators and ideas over others - I don’t think the academic community has developed a systemic vision of that.

Just like everyone else, we believe that if you fail, the problem is most likely in you. You didn’t work hard enough, your idea is not brilliant enough (I feel like I can write a very long post about why I hate this “brilliance” fetish in academia), and so on.

I’m not calling for blaming the system every time something doesn’t go according to our plan. But we need to keep our eyes open for systemic inequalities - especially when looking at someone who can’t get an article published or a project funded. Sometimes there are systemic reasons.

But sometimes, we could’ve worked harder, in which case it’s worth taking the negative outcome as an opportunity to grow. Honestly, looking back, I think that some of the rejections I experienced in my career were perfectly fair, and I didn’t do a good enough job, even though it didn’t feel that way at the time. It’s a difficult balance to strike: between learning from your mistakes and blaming the system.

We continue to reproduce the success bias, despite some recent progress

I mentioned above that I think the tides are shifting, and there’s more nuanced discourse on success in academia today than, say, ten years ago. Increasingly more people are sharing their frustrations, even on the ever-positive platforms like LinkedIn. Perhaps the reason is the undeniable features of the academic job market and the funding systems: resources are scarce, aspirants are many, and the gate-keeping and attention inequities are still shaping the outcomes. A fun trend from a while ago (that didn’t stick or get normalized) - the CV’s of failures that some scholars began to publish (e.g. Melanie Stefan (2010). A CV of failures. Nature); but it is also a luxury only those who have a lot of successes to go with it can afford.

Still, this is how we are taught to present ourselves to the world: here’s what I made, here’s what I succeeded at, instead of - here’s my bumpy process where I didn’t get everything I wanted, and here’s what I learned from it.

The burden of normalization is on the successful ones

Seeing the successful people acknowledge that they also get rejected can help normalize rejection. Those who succeeded at something have the responsibility to show that this is not always the case for them. My PhD supervisor, a successful and productive academic writer by all accounts, once presented his draft paper at a workshop, where it was as good as demolished by the participants. At the end of the workshop, he said: ok, I probably shouldn’t pursue this. I learned a lot from this moment, because it highlighted the backstage of success - projects critiqued and abandoned, experiences to learn from.

This was not a public situation, and I was privileged to participate in this egalitarian workshop as a graduate student. I wish these moments were more accessible to learners, but the conditions in which people are socialized into academia vary widely. But even small things, like this old tweet from the sociologist Shamus Khan (who seems to have deleted his X account) can be reassuring for some - as it was for me, when I, a postdoc, struggled to stay calm in the face of yet another paper rejection:

“Another rejection, another day. What’s there left to do but dust off, go home and make dinner, and start again tomorrow.”

This post is inspired by an episode on rejection in academia in Zaklinaniya i Zayavki, a Russian-language podcast we produce with Dr. Olga Zeveleva.

Some resources:

• Eskreis-Winkler, L., & Fishbach, A. (2020). Hidden failures. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 157, 57–67.

• Jarrett, C. (2020, June 17). The learning opportunities hiding in our failures. BBC Worklife. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200616-the-learning-opportunities-hiding-in-our-failures

• Shaw, S. R. (2022, July 29). Coping with rejection in the academic world. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/how-do-academia/202207/coping-rejection-in-the-academic-world

• Zavattaro, S. M. (2019, April 9). Dealing with rejection in academia. Impact of Social Sciences. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/04/09/dealing-with-rejection-in-academia