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“Share your failures” thread

In the comments section of our previous post, “Dealing with rejection in academic philosophy?“, a reader wrote:

it helps hearing about others’ failures! It makes it seem less personal and shameful and more just part of the deal. So, wildly successful academics, please share your failure stories! In fact, maybe we need an open thread? A series of posts? I’d write one but it probably wouldn’t be any good.

Another reader seconded the suggestion, and I think a thread like that could be helpful. So, share away! Do you have a “failure story” you’re willing to share?

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21 responses to ““Share your failures” thread”

  1. Anonymous

    I recall seeing this “CV of failures” idea a few years ago. (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/30/cv-of-failures-princeton-professor-publishes-resume-of-his-career-lows)

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I work in a niche field. I want to share a story that happened to me some time ago. I was in the US at that time and traveled to a reputable European university for a job talk.

    I flew in and went to the first meeting, a presentation for the department. I waited in an empty hallway, the chair of the committee came out of a door, shook my hand without a word and made me enter a room with a visibly dusty table. Three other committee members were sitting at the table. None of them stood up or said anything. I sat down and they stared at me. The chair said that he was surprised that no one from the department was there. I gave my presentation.

    The next part was a teaching demo for students and faculty members. I talked a bit and opened the floor to the students. No one said anything, until the chair of the committee forced them to do so. One student asked a general question, and that was it.

    The last part was a faculty meeting. They had prepared a table with refreshments. The chair of the committee made me sit on a chair while faculty members were drinking coffee and eating snacks. I was asked critical questions about my research and teaching plans for 70 minutes and wasn’t offered a glass of water.

    I met the two other candidates, one of whom I already knew and who is an outstanding scholar. He told me that he had a very bad feeling and felt treated poorly.

    One month later, I was told via a rather impolite email that the job had been offered to another candidate. The successful candidate did not work in the field advertised for the position. They had no publications and no teaching experience in the field. However, they had done their PhD with the senior committee member, had done a postdoc under their supervision, and was teaching classes for them.

    This experience corroborated two ideas that I had gathered from other job talks: That one should be generally cautious about job talk invitations in Europe, and that nine out of ten academic positions are filled, not on the basis of research or teaching experience, but on the basis of nepotism or “we know this candidate” reasons. For having been a finalist in different places, I just cannot believe how poorly some European universities treat their candidates. And as someone who doesn’t have a lot of social capital on which I could build, I feel frustrated that it took me several years to understand that, no matter how hard you try, no faculty in the world is ever going to hire someone they don’t know, or who just appeared out of the blue.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous

    I started my permanent position in a research-intensive uni in UK almost 4 years ago. Grant expectations are high. So far, I have applied five times to medium-to-big grants (two different projects, reflecting my two main research interests). Success rate? 0%.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous

    I’m tenured at a CC, but I’m trying very hard to relocate to be nearer to some family. Out of 30 or 40 applications, I’ve had 6 interviews.

    One was for a permanent lecturer gig (an easier job for more money); they told me they had 168 applicants for that job (so, clearly, I was top 10% since I got an interview). I didn’t make it beyond first round, though.

    Another was a permanent lecturer gig at a state flagship school. They asked me to talk about what classes I teach at my current institution. I did. Afterward I got an email that I talked too much about classes they didn’t need taught and too little about ones they did (I wasn’t aware beforehand which was which and their teaching needs wasn’t the topic of the question they asked). I didn’t get beyond first round.

    I’ve been all the way to 3rd round interviews for 4 different CC jobs.

    One was TT and my dream job and dream location and was going to be an easier job for more money. Mid 1st-round interview they claimed to need an AOS in social phil. I was completely thrown off because (a) their ad said nothing about an AOS and (b) way more importantly it was a CC (no publication requirements and only teaching introductory courses) so why did they need a particular AOS at all? Anyway, I was told later on (after they still had me interview for two more rounds) that they loved me but they ‘conceived of social philosophy differently than I did.’ I still don’t know exactly what that amounted to.

    Another one was TT and also a great location, and the only other philosopher on staff seemed very excited about me and I thought it was obvious we were clicking personality-wise especially during the on-campus interview. After the 3rd round interview (during which the provost and president both acted ecstatic about having me on board), the phil prof pulled me into a classroom and (as best as I could tell) was trying very hard to ask me what it would take to get me to accept an offer without using those words directly. He called all of my references within 24 hours of me leaving that campus (and told one of my references that I would be getting a phone call very soon). I never got an offer and weeks later I emailed to inquire and he said the position had been filled. No clue what happened.

    It’s tough out there.

    Reply
  5. Anonymous

    Instead of a 2000 word mid term assignment, I got students to write 400 words every other week, and gave feedback on writing. This happened 5 times, so the words they wrote were still 2000. The outcome was a) their final assignment were very well written, because they got so many tries and so much feedback, b) a disastrous teaching evaluation, with “too many assignments” as the primary feedback.

    So the lesson I guess was simple: don’t do what is good for students at your own expense.

    Reply
  6. Anonymous

    I have a full draft of a book manuscript, but before I go to presses I want to try to get a paper or two from it published in journals. I’ve got two papers under review – one has been rejected 6 times already and one have been rejected 8 times. It doesn’t make me feel very hopeful about the book….

    Reply
  7. Daniel

    When I submit papers, mostly I get rejections, and often those are desk rejections. Among my published papers, my most rejected paper was rejected by 12 journals before being accepted, and 10 of those were desk rejections. I have a paper I like a lot but it has been rejected 17 times (including once after an R&R) and I’m not sure there are any journals left to submit it to.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Thanks for sharing this, it does make me realize it’s not just me. Regarding the paper with 12 rejections, did you update it after each rejection? And did the final version still correspond to your original draft?

      Reply
      1. Daniel

        I definitely did not update it after each of the 12 rejections. It went through two extremely significant rewrites, one after only a single rejection because someone else had since published a paper on the same topic making many of the same points, and one after a few more rejections when I decided to change the main framing/focus of the paper. So, the final draft is very different from the original draft. However, mostly when it was rejected I sent it back out again unchanged.

  8. non-native

    I am a tenure-track philosopher working in a non-anglophone country. Over the past two years, I’ve racked up 21 paper rejections. This includes a rejection after a grueling round of R&R, and another after a 19-month review process, ultimately killed by a Reviewer 2 who submitted a dismissive, few-sentence report within a single day.

    Reply
  9. Anonymous

    After I landed my first good publication since starting my job, I decided on two other papers to work up and send out as my “pre-tenure” pubs, at least one of which I needed to put me over the edge. So I worked like crazy on them and started submitting… Four years later, nothing.

    Reply
  10. Anonymous

    I am not a wildly successful academic, but I am a grad student at a Leiterific program with one publication in a top journal. If you looked at my website, you might think: “pretty good record for a grad student!” Looking under the hood, however:

    I’ve submitted six papers to various journals. I have submitted them, collectively, 26 times. One was accepted. One got an R&R and was ultimately rejected. The other 24 were rejected without R&R. Of those, 14 were rejected with comments, and 10 were desk-rejected. To get a more specific sense… on the 14 rejected with comments, there were 20 total reviews. 8 were somewhere between solidly negative and extremely negative, 4 were positive but recommended reject, 3 recommended R&R, and 5 were roughly neutral.

    Job wise, I’ve been on the market the past two years. I stopped keeping a spreadsheet of my job applications but I’ve applied to about 130 jobs. I’ve had one interview for a TT job that didn’t lead to a fly out. I’ve been waitlisted for two (very pleasant) postdocs. That leaves about 127 rejections without a positive signal first.

    Maybe a reassuring (?) note. The publication was rejected by four times before being accepted, all by journals less selective than the one that accepted it. The paper that got an R&R was rejected five other times without R&R, all by journals less selective than the one that gave it an R&R. I’m not sure what the lesson is — a 1/26 record feels pretty bleak by any measure — but something along the lines of, a rejection doesn’t mean everyone will think a paper sucks.

    Is my hit percentage worse than those who are doing very well in their careers? Surely, by a good amount. Still, if I somehow continued at this exact rate for (say) 8 more years without burning out, I’d then have 5 publications in top journals, and that would look pretty good for someone at my career stage. It would mean that I also had 125 rejections, including 40 solidly to extremely negative reviews. So, something to keep in mind when you look longingly at the website of a junior hotshot with 4-8 top publications who looks like they can’t miss.

    Reply
  11. Anonymous

    It’s worth looking at Rae Langton’s website, where she very candidly lists all her professional setbacks. Whenever I feel dejected about setbacks, I look at her list and think ‘well, she ended up as Professor at Cambridge, so…’

    Reply
  12. Anonymous

    I reckon I’ve amassed about 155 rejected job applications, of which some fraction have ghosted me. The latter include a flyout!

    Reply
  13. Anonymous

    ah, what the hell– I might regret this but hey, this thread was my suggestion, so let me go ahead and share a story and sign my name to it. That’s what tenure’s for, right?

    It’s me! Hi. I’m the above commenter. Alex Plakias. (I don’t remember my wordpress password, so no idea if my name will come up.)

    First year in my tenure-track job and I had achieved a longtime goal of getting an abstract accepted at a prestigious metaethics workshop (iykyk). Writing the draft paper while doing an international move to start the job was rough, but I pulled it off. Presented the paper and really felt like I crushed it (no, neither of these are the failure part– wait for it). All that’s left to do is revise the paper and submit, for a shiny publication and line on the cv.

    Never have I suffered such a combination of writer’s block, paralyzing anxiety, and self-doubt. Never has anyone overcomplicated a task like I did. I tore the entire paper apart and started from scratch. Talk about reinventing the wheel, I reinvented the circle. It was a mess! I delayed, I read every possibly relevant article, I wrote nothing, I wrote something and deleted it, until I barely knew what my topic even was. Let me remind you: I had. A perfectly. Good. Draft. Did I use it? Nope!

    Finally, at literally the last possible moment, I hit ‘send’ on whatever soggy heap of ideas I’d managed to pull together. Surprise! My submission was rejected. I was devastated (though admittedly not really surprised). Worse, I was *so* ashamed! I’d been so proud to get into the workshop– I really felt like I’d made it to the big leagues, and now all my impostor feelings were confirmed.

    It took me quite a while to be able to even think about that incident, let alone talk about it. And now here I am writing about it IN PUBLIC. What changed? I think partly, I can now see that episode as a step in a process that led to me writing some other stuff I really enjoyed writing and am genuinely proud of. Sure, I would’ve rather skipped it, and maybe I could have. But maybe not. And maybe it helped me by making space for me to spend some time thinking about topics I wouldn’t have landed on otherwise. Or, maybe it was just a really stupid thing I did. It took years of distance, and some successes, to remove the sting of that episode.

    I realize now, looking at these other comments, that I’m lucky to have had the opportunity to fail like that and keep going. So, I figure I might as well use the privilege to share this story. I hope someone feels at least a little less bad after reading it, or at least found it mildly amusing.

    Reply
  14. Anonymous

    I had a paper that had been rejected for 5-6 times over a couple of years. For at least twice, I waited for more than two to three months and got rejections with zero comments. Then, finally, in the year before I went up for tenure, I got a “minor revision” in May. The editor mentioned they accepted most minor revisions. I got two comments: one asked me to change some abbreviations, and one said the paper was too long. I changed the abbreviations and explained why it was long (btw this is a journal that accepts long articles). I sent the revised version back quickly. I waited for months without any word. I sent a couple of inquiries to the executive editor with no response. In February of the following year, the paper got rejected by two new reviewers’ reports.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      I believe it would do the profession (especially its younger members) a great service if you could indicate, in some way fitting, which journal this is — not to point fingers at the journal, just to alert those who would benefit from being informed about irresponsible behaviors.

      Reply
  15. Anonymous

    I’m certainly not ’wildly successful’, but I have a permanent associate professor job, I have a reasonable number of publications (including a couple in ‘top 5’ journals), my google scholar metrics are not terrible (by philosophy standards at least), and I occasionally get international conference invitations. So, I am about as successful as I could ever have reasonably hoped to be. But I also have a long list of failures.

    It took me 8 years to land a permanent job – including a year and a half of complete unemployment when me and my wife had to live with my parents. We had so little money that we had to sell a laptop so that my wife could afford a monthly train ticket to commute to the only dead-end job either of us could land. In my first couple of years on the market I applied to pretty much everything. Every open TT position I was vaguely qualified for regardless f country. All the postdocs. All the standard non-academic paths in my country. And many local ‘non-career’ jobs (sales, supermarket work etc.). The only interview I landed in my first year on the market was for a ‘Teach First’ position that I would have been terrible at. I didn’t get the job. I have only ever landed one interview for a position in the U.S. And that was only a first round interview at an R2 department. I was interviewed twice for lectureships in my home town (which has a good philosophy department). I never made the cut. I had a few years on the market where I landed no interviews whatsoever.

    A fairly high proportion of my papers have been rejected at least once before being accepted. Many have been desk rejected a few times (although this has happened less in recent years). My most rejected paper received 13 rejections before eventually being accepted. I have a few papers that I have given up on. The worst was a paper that served as the foundation for a number of other papers that I wrote but didn’t want to send out immediately until the foundational paper was published. I presented the paper a few times, including to audiences who were experts in the subject matter. A few other very good philosophers read the paper and provided comments. I got review reports from a couple of top journals where the reviewers raised objections that were very easy to reply to. The third time I sent it out I received a review that, whilst quite encouraging in tone, contained an objection that I took to be completely devastating to the proposal. I binned the paper, and those papers that couldn’t be re-written to avoid reliance on the flawed view. I was able to re-write one paper to avoid reliance on the flawed proposal, but before I finished writing the paper somebody else published a paper pushing a very similar view in Mind. I re-wrote the paper as what was essentially a glorified reply piece to the Mind paper, and published it in a far less fancy journal. In my final year or so on the job market things got so desperate that I just fired off a bunch of papers that were simply not ready to be sent out. They got rightfully rejected and, although I think there were some good ideas in some of those papers, I’m now too embarrassed to do anything with them because I don’t want anyone knowing it was me who sent those papers out.

    I have had some limited success with grant applications. But for the last 5 years I have been banging my head against the wall with a single application that, when I first came up with it, was new and exciting. Because I need grant money I held off on writing the papers connected to the project for a long time. Now, after 5 years of failed attempts, other people are catching up and starting to come out with similar things so the ideas no longer seem so novel and exciting.

    I’m sure I will have many more failures in the future. Hopefully some successes too – we’ll see.

    Reply
  16. Robin McKenna

    Some highlights, or rather lowlights:

    – I published a book with OUP a few years ago. But before I submitted the book to OUP I submitted it to Cambridge (I can’t really recall why) and it got rejected with a not very encouraging report. I almost gave up on the project at this point.

    – Between about 2018 and 2024 (I started a permanent job in 2018) I did not submit, or even write, a single new paper to a journal.

    – After the unexpected success of landing my first job without even properly applying for it, I had a miserable time on the job market. At one point I racked up 10 final stage/flyout interviews in a row without a job offer. (I forget how many first round interviews I had during this period. Not counting the ones where I went to the next stage, at least 5).

    – Apart from the Australiasian Journal of Philosophy, who seem to like me, I had no luck (not even an R+R) from the standard list of top 10 journals until I was 12 years post-PhD.

    Reply
  17. Anonymous

    I am by no means a wild success. But I do have a TT job I love at an R1 in a location I greatly enjoy with lovely colleagues, I’ve had some minor success with publications, and I know enough people who think well enough of me that I get to go to some conferences and talks I find fun. From my perspective, this is more success than I could have dreamed possible.

    And I had to remove someone from my dissertation committee for not believing in my work. I lost a year of funding for various bureaucratic reasons and likely would not have made it but for support from my parents. I have been rejected from dozens and dozens of jobs including being ghosted by many after flyouts, given some objectively godawful talks, and earlier in my career was very close to dropping out of the profession on the ground that I would never succeed. I had had only rejections, had no funding for the next year, got an email yet again which I assumed was a rejection (from a not very prestigious journal) and assumed this was it- I had only signals of failure and I needed to go do something else. When I opened the email, it was an acceptance. But let’s be clear- I’ve had plenty of rejections since then. These days I simply swear under my breath, delete the email, and get on with it.

    I know a lot of people who look quite successful. But none of them have come through unscathed.

    Reply
  18. Anonymous

    I just got a JRF. This was the 33rd Oxbridge job I had applied to over the past 4 years on the market. The first 32 were unsuccessful. I hope this may be a small encouragement to others!

    Reply

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