Advice from One Academic on Rejection

By Dr. Kate Sweeny

This article was originally published under the title of “Common Academic Experiences No One Talks About: Repeated Rejection, Impostor Syndrome, and Burnout” in Perspectives on Psychological Science.

My name is Kate Sweeny, and I have been rejected. A lot. I have submitted many manuscripts and grants that received harsh reviews, applied for many awards I never received, and applied for many jobs I did not get. In case anyone needs evidence to support my rejection credentials, between 2014 and 2019 (an arbitrary snapshot of my recent career, culled from a painful trip down rejection-memory lane), I submitted approximately 45 unique manuscripts a total of 160 times (yes, I know that is a lot; see my comment toward the end of my section about my “maniacal” rate of submissions). Of those 160 submissions, approximately 75 were outright rejections of the “do not send it back here” sort. In that same period, I submitted 10 major grant proposals, all of which were rejected. Suffice it to say, I am nearly a professional rejectee at this point. The rejections have become easier to swallow now that I have tenure, of course, and I am fortunate to have a relatively large lab that allows for a high rate of submissions. Nonetheless, it is never easy to hear that your ideas or your work fall short of someone’s standards.

With all of that experience, one would hope that I have learned something from what appears to be a long career of failures intermingled with success. In fact, the most important lesson I can share is that rejection is not failure. It is simply an inevitable and often necessary step in the journey toward success—whether in research or teaching and mentoring domains. The life of an academic, particularly in the research sphere, demands that we take chances, that we aim higher than we think we can reach on the off chance that our work is deserving of publication in a desirable journal or funding by a major grant agency. I suspect we all know someone who largely avoids rejection by holding on to papers for far too long before submitting them or aiming only for sure-thing opportunities. He or she may avoid the sting of hearing “no” 85 times in 5 years, but I would argue that preemptively limiting your opportunities just to avoid that sting is the greater failure.

A quote from Brené Brown’s book Rising Strong (2015) sums up my perspective on rejection in academia better than I ever could: “You can choose courage or you can choose comfort. You cannot have both” (p. 4). I would argue that the life of an academic researcher is pretty great—but to get a job like ours, to keep it and to thrive in it, one must have courage to face rejection over and over again.

On a more practical level, I have gleaned some strategies for coping with rejection over the years, from both personal experience and my many cherished mentors. First, do not dwell on rejection (easier said than done, but a good goal to pursue). My graduate advisor, James Shepperd, taught me this lesson well. Any time a manuscript of ours was rejected, he would respond with a shrug and say, “Oh well. Where to next?” Reviewers are notoriously inconsistent, so sometimes a harsh rejection is followed by a set of glowing reviews simply by going to a different journal or funding agency. Of course, it is always important to carefully and humbly consider the validity of harsh reviews, but it is equally important to trust yourself when you know you are on to something important and interesting. My advisor also taught me an important lesson about how to make rejection easier to absorb: Be compassionate when reviewing others’ work, pairing criticisms with clear acknowledgments of the strengths of a manuscript or grant proposal. I try to model that approach for my mentees when editing their manuscripts and providing feedback on students’ talks, and we can all contribute to a culture of greater compassion in our field by doing the same. It will not remove the pain of rejection, but it might make it hurt a bit less.

Second, take some time before moving on to the next step. If you get a tough rejection and find yourself feeling defeated, walk away for a few days (or for the really bad ones, maybe a few weeks) and then come back to the reviews when you feel ready to face them. Self-care is crucial to staying in the research game for the long haul, and you may also find that you can absorb the more constructive critiques if you let the emotional impact of rejection wane a bit.

Third, persistence is key. If the findings are interesting and the study is well conceived and well designed, your manuscript will almost certainly find a home somewhere. To date, my longest publication lag from starting the research to seeing the article in print is 7 years. I have published a number of articles in the fifth or even sixth journal to which I submitted them. I have been fortunate to be in a position to absorb these delays in publication and the frustrations of the resubmission process. And in the end, those articles are some of my favorites on my curriculum vitae (CV), and they were ultimately very well received and increasingly well cited. That being said, sometimes it is equally important to walk away, or at least to get a second opinion before persisting further. A few manuscripts in my career never ended up on the printed page, and I am confident that walking away from those projects was the right decision. In other cases, after a few rejections and enormous frustration, I have asked a colleague to read the manuscript and point out where I might be going wrong. In those cases, I always wished I had asked earlier because it is so easy to become myopic about our own work. When you start feeling like you and your reviewers are not seeing eye to eye, it might be time to get a friendly but critical set of eyes on the manuscript to help you process the rejection in a new way.

Fourth, do not be afraid or ashamed to seek professional help if the stress of rejection (or any aspect of this difficult job) becomes overwhelming. I have a family history of depression, a history that unfortunately continues with me. It took me far too long to seek help, but I finally connected with a good therapist and a good psychiatrist in recent years, and I am beginning to understand some of the cognitive patterns that exacerbate my work-related stress. For example, at times I have pursued what my colleagues affectionately refer to as a “maniacal” level of professional activity, driven by perfectionism, anxiety, and a fear of failure. Because of my productivity during these times, I look successful on paper. However, success should be defined more broadly than the length of one’s CV. There are many ways to define success, and research productivity is only one of them. In fact, my therapist has helped me to see that happiness with one’s life is more important than miserable success as a researcher, and my ability to cope with professional setbacks has improved significantly as a result.

Finally, and perhaps most important, identify trusted colleagues with whom you can openly discuss your harshest and most embarrassing experiences with rejection. Commiserating with friends about these difficult professional moments washes away shame and loneliness and reminds us that our value as a scientist does not rest in any one success or failure, and our value as a person does not rest on our success or failure as a scientist (personal experience suggests that a glass or two of wine facilitates this process). In fact, my goal in participating in the SPSP symposium that inspired this piece, and now in contributing to it, is to convey exactly that message to the audience of listeners/readers: You are not alone. Any rejection you have faced, hundreds, if not thousands, of other researchers have faced the same or worse. It can be uncomfortable to talk about these challenges with even our closest friends, much less an anonymous group of readers, but I am confident that the risk is worth the message. We are all trying to do our best at a very hard job.