Dealing with rejection in academia
Repost from April 17, 2024
Earlier this week, I celebrated an impending publication. Today, I'm reflecting on my experiences with rejection in academia and how I bounce back from feelings of failure. While I've enjoyed success in my educational and professional career, I'm no stranger to rejection by colleagues. It's easy to advise others not to take them personally, but sometimes, like racial microaggressions, rejections can accumulate and take a collective toll on an individual's self-esteem.
In academia, acceptances and rejections are normal. For graduate students, an increasing demand and dwindling supply of jobs, publications, and scholarships/fellowships result in competition among peers. These are two personal examples of rejection in academia.
Job rejection: I recently applied for a summer job at my home institution and felt SO GOOD about it. I had one of my best job interviews since graduating from college and felt confident about receiving an offer. A week after my interview, I received a rejection. It hurt and caused me to question, where did I go wrong? While I appreciated the supervisor's candor in their reasoning for the rejection (they went with a candidate who already worked for their program), it didn't soften the blow. In this instance, I was able to overcome this rejection by remembering the proverbial saying that when one door closes, another opens. Although I didn't receive this job, I was offered another one that would still give me teaching experience leading into my final year of graduate school.
Article rejection: One of the rejections that really affected my self-esteem was a rejection for a conceptual paper I wrote critiquing multiculturalism in Hawaiʻi as an anti-Kanaka ʻŌiwi ideology. The peer-review comments weren't necessarily scathing, but they caused me to question my sense of purpose, especially because I believed the paper was insightful and well-written, relevant for the publication's aims and scope, and necessary for today's racial climate. I learned not to take the critiques personally and not to give up on pursuing publication after one rejection. Moreover, after overcoming my sadness from the rejection, I've come to view the critiques in a positive way. The reviewers made valid and useful comments that helped me revise and strengthen the article. It is still a work-in-progress, but it is definitely a better paper now than when I first submitted it for review.
When a rejection is still fresh, you may find yourself reminiscing on past criticisms or mistakes. In those moments, I urge you to remember your purpose, your personal "why." Why academia? Why graduate school? Why research, teaching, and education? Consider alternative pathways that can help you make progress toward your goals.
Look to your community to process rejections and celebrate your successes. There's a powerful line from the first season of Ted Lasso that I always think of when I'm feeling down about a rejection. Following a tough loss, Ted, the head coach of a premier soccer league team, tells his players, "There is something worse out there than being sad, and it's being alone and being sad." I feel extremely grateful that I get to share this graduate student experience with my loved ones. I would not be here without them.
As I begin to plan for the impending transition from a doctoral program to a job or a postdoctoral opportunity, I know that the near future will be filled with acceptances and rejections. My career as an educator, a researcher, an activist will be filled with successes and failures. Mistakes. Challenges. My co-advisor Daniel Solórzano shared that he has a drawer filled with rejection letters spanning the length of his career, and in my opinion, he is one of the most skilled theorizers and gifted writers in education.
To this end, perhaps one of the best pieces of advice I can offer is to normalize the experience of rejection in academia. Rejection is common. We can and should talk about it because we can learn from them. We can adjust and adapt. We can try again. And again.
A personal example of a rejection for a proposed article (2021)
