I always said I'd never be a salesman. I dreaded rejection as a kid: selling Girl Scout cookies, wincing through school fundraisers, navigating new friendships -- all of it stressed me out. Lately, though, I have been thinking that salesmanship is a significant part of job; it's just that I'm selling ideas.
I sell my students, mostly successfully, on the idea that the material in my classes is interesting and useful and manageable. I sell editors, somewhat less successfully, on the ideas in my papers. I just submitted my second sales pitch of the year to a grant funding committee, after the first proposal was rejected.
Rejection is part of sales, whether you're selling vacuum cleaners or ideas. But nobody in my world talks about it.
I could tell you a story in which I sound like a successful pre-tenure faculty member: I had two papers published in the spring semester, and I'm optimistic about getting two more published before the end of the year. I could tell you a different story, too: I had two other papers rejected in the spring semester, and I spent the summer afraid to write a third paper because I know it's likely to get rejected on its first airing. It's my first qualitative paper; it's in a subfield where I have more training as a clinician than an academic. It's probably going to take a couple of iterations to get it in shape.
People tend to treat that iterative process as a badge of shame. I resolved, when I got the letter from the grant funding committee, to be more transparent about it.
Maybe the worst part of impostor syndrome is the certainty that everybody else has it together except you. Nobody else is so nervous pushing "submit"; nobody else ever flinches, remembering the joke that fell utterly flat.
I know, on the one hand, that this is preposterous. At the same time, that sneering inner voice is persistent.
This afternoon I was invited to the dean's office as part of a panel, to talk to a group of first-year faculty about the first-year experience. I said, "If I could give one piece of advice to my first-year self, I would tell her to be more patient with herself as a learner. To remember that there's a reason nobody goes up for tenure in her second year, just like nobody gets a PhD in a year." I talked about the anxiety that consumed me during my first year in the classroom-- how much it had gnawed at me initially, how completely it had receded. And then I felt like a DORK for the next three hours. It's all well and good to talk about being transparent, but maybe IN FRONT OF THE DEAN isn't the place, said my regretful self. I tried to tell myself to settle down, that they hadn't wanted panelists to talk about how effortlessly they'd sailed through the first year, but this attempt met with mixed success.
Two weeks ago my grant rejection letter came in the mail, just an hour before my friend K and I had our monthly meeting for coffee and goal-setting. "Do you ever feel like a rejection is a referendum?" I asked her.
"Like it means everything I'm doing is worthless and stupid and I should just resign before they deny me tenure? Oh, no," she said sarcastically, "I have no idea what you're talking about."
So. I think it's valuable to be transparent, to say, "I am going to hit my quota, but I am hearing a fair amount of NOPE along the way." But it's a lot easier to pretend otherwise.
Good timing in this post, my friend. I mean... sort of. ;-) My husband just had a paper accepted today, less than 24h after he submitted the revised version, after an earlier (and mercifully swift) first rejection at another publication. He is also going up for tenure (no fears there) & this was his last shot at a "career award" grant and he's waiting to hear, but he has a feeling that maybe he won't get it. He was SOOOO close last time (two years ago), that it took them a whole year to finally pull the plug, instead of the customary 6 months. So maybe this bodes well for this second & last try? I mean, maybe not because his weakness was publications & he only had two (counting this one accepted today that he had put down as "submitted" in the grant application, sent last July).
Anyway... I have all but completely lost hope in ever getting a TT job, but maybe you saw my last post (won't repeat myself here). I don't feel like a failure, but maybe I should because in my case I don't have time OR motivation to even submit publications. Sigh... too much hassle to toil away for nothing. So I recently found out talking to a TT grad school friend who lives a couple of hours away, but who I never get to see, that my dissertation research is not pretty much outdated because one of the authors I write about has had many more works translated since 2008, so there's A LOT to keep up with if I want to claim to still be a specialist on the subject. Sigh... anyway. I hear you. And maybe I should try more, or maybe not.
Posted by: L - Mama(e) in Translation | September 11, 2015 at 11:24 PM
I think your instinct for transparency is spot on. I've been talking about the dissertation process, warts and all.
Posted by: Kate | September 11, 2015 at 11:38 PM
Heh -- my grad school buddies and I used to call it the "imposter complex." And it pervades everything. I remember talking about just daily work methods with my adviser once, and how I was finding that I could only sit and write for...(sheepishly) two hours before I turned to mush and had to get up. I was sheepish, because it was really 90 minutes of quality work, followed by half and hour of pushing and clawing to fight my way to two hours.
My adviser said, "Wow, you can do two hours? I can only do about 90 minutes."
It's good to talk about this stuff. ;-)
Posted by: Kristin | September 12, 2015 at 07:18 AM