Coping with Rejection

Rejection is an integral part of academic life. Whether you’re applying for jobs or for funding, submitting journal articles or book proposals, or putting yourself forward for promotion, academics need to develop a thick skin in order to survive and thrive.

But rejection need not be crushing. At last month’s Early Career Researcher Network we looked at strategies for overcoming it and support available for coping with it.

Key points from this included:

• Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Success rates are, at best, 1 in 4, so you’ve got to be prepared for three times as many of your efforts being rejected than funded. Try to mitigate this by having a number of projects, ideas and applications on the go. 
• Repeat, recycle, incinerate. When your application is rejected, think about where else you can submit it, or how you can get funding for elements of it. It may even pay to be more ambitious: perhaps your application was rejected because it wasn’t being daring or bold enough. However, there comes a time when the horse is well and truly dead, and no amount of whipping will get it across the line. It’s time to blow torch your application, and move on to something new. 
• Take on board feedback. Get feedback at every stage, and from all sources. Get it from colleagues before you submit, but make sure you push funders to provide it after rejection. Not all do, but take seriously any reviewers’ comments they provide. However unfair they may seem, try not to take them personally, and, if valid, learn from them.
• Remember you’re not the first. Rejection can be crushing, but many, many people before you have been in the same position and have gone on to success. Try not to be disheartened - although that’s easier said than done. When he was head of the publisher Faber and Faber, TS Eliot rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and both Moby Dick and The Great Gatsby got knocked back. Rejection isn’t the end. 
• Process rejection before it happens. Rejection can feel like more than just a refusal to fund your project; it can feel like a negation of you. It’s hard not to feel these things, but it can help to prepare for it by ‘pre-processing’ rejection, to expect the worst before it happens, and to be moving on with alternatives even before the letter - whether it be good or bad - comes through your door. 
• Work with others. Having collaborators and networks to work with can lessen the personal power of rejection, but it can also strengthen your application. It provides a way to develop ideas, to get informal feedback, to share the workload, and to be more than the sum of your parts. And, of course, an empathetic shoulder to cry on when the rejection comes. 
• Keep your dignity. With rejection comes anger, and it’s tempting to hunt down those who have rejected you, to rail and curse and seek redress. But try to keep your dignity and professionalism. Rejection is part of life, particularly academic life, and in small disciplinary circles being ‘the bitter one who never got over it’ isn’t a good look.

Persistence and determination - and a thick skin - can ultimately pay off. Sometimes, however, there is only one thing worse than being rejected, and that is not being rejected. Getting the funding is wonderful, but that’s when a whole new set of headaches and heartaches begin...