List of failures

In academia (and in life in general), we tend to highlight only the successes: the published papers, the grants, the awards we received. Yet in reality, we actually face failures and rejections every. single. day.

I believe that one of the reasons why so many of us battle with imposter syndrome is because all we see around us is everyone else always succeeding, without realizing that this is not the reality. Most of us actually fail more often than we succeed, and needless to say, these failures are very often more valuable than all the wins, because they teach us so much. So here comes a (definitely shortened) list of some of my recent failures:

• The first time I presented any of my PhD research at ICA was in my final PhD year, just four months before my defense. Before that, I would always get rejections for my dissertation studies.
• Most of my published papers got about three rejections before even receiving a “major revision” from a journal.
• Before coming to the University of Vienna, I applied for a master’s program at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. It was actually my dream program, so I studied for the GMAT exam every single day for about six months. I could only afford to take the exam once, and when I did, I scored way below average and below every one of my practice tests. I did get rejected from the master’s program.
• I have been in situations at conferences where I got a comment or a question about my research and was completely unable to answer it. This has happened too many times.
• I regularly have working days during which I accomplish absolutely nothing.
• I recently received a rejection from a dissertation award and, a few months prior, from a summer school I really, really wanted to attend.
• I really struggle with networking and rarely connect with other researchers at conferences (even though I usually want to!).
• I’ve lived in Austria for 6 years, and shamefully, I still communicate mostly in English.