When the hits come, they really come hard.

I’m dealing with some significant personal/professional failures this month.

I put in for two federal operating grants this past year: one from NSERC to fund my basic cognitive science work on learning and memory and one from SSHRC to fund some relatively new research on mindfulness meditation. I worked pretty hard on these last fall.

And today I found out that neither were funded.

Port Stanley Beach, ON 2018

This means that for the first time in a long number of years, my lab does not have an active federal research grant. The renewal application from NSERC is particularly hard to swallow, since I’ve held multiple NSERC grants and they have a pretty high funding rate relative to other programs. I feel like the rug was pulled out from under me and worry about how to support the graduate students in my lab. I can still carry on doing good research this coming year, and I have some residual funds, but I won’t lie: this is very disappointing.

The cruelest month, the cruelest profession.

It’s often said that academic/scientific work loads heavily on dealing with failure. It’s true. I’ve had failed grants before. Rejected manuscripts. Experiments that I thought were interesting or good that fell apart with additional scrutiny. For every success, there are multiple failures. And that’s all just part of being a successful academic. Beyond that, many academics may work 6-8 years to get a PhD, do a post doc, and find themselves being rejected from one job after another. Other academics struggle with being on the tenure track and may fail to achieve that milestone.

And April really truly is the cruelest month in academics.  Students may have to deal with: rejection from grad school, med school, graduate scholarships, job applications, internships, residency programs. They worry about their final exams. Faculty worry about rejection from grants, looking for jobs, and a whole host of other things. (and at least here in Canada, we still have snow in the forecast…)

Why am I writing this?

Well, why not? I’m not going to hide these failures in shame. Or try to blame someone else. I have to look these failures in the eye, own them, take responsibility for them, and keep working. Part of that means taking the time to work through my emotions and feelings about this. That’s why I’m writing this.

I’m also writing, I guess, to say that it’s worth keeping in mind that we all deal with some kind of stress or anxiety or rejection. Even people who seem to have it together (like me, I probably seem like I have it together: recently promoted to Full Professor, respectable research output, I’ve won several teaching awards, written a textbook, and have been a kind and decent teacher and mentor to 100s of students)…we all get hits. But really, I’m doing fine. I’m still lucky. I’m still privileged. I know that others will be hurting more than I am. I have no intention to wallow in pity or fight with rage. I’m not going to stop working. Not going to stop writing, doing research or trying to improve as a teacher. Moving forward is the only way I can move.

Moving on

We all fail. The question is: What are you going to do about it?

From a personal standpoint, I’m not going to let this get me down. I’ve been in this boat before. I have several projects that are now beginning to bear fruit. I’ve had a terrific insights about some new collaborative work. I have a supportive department and I’m senior enough to weather quite a lot. (thought I’m not Job, so you don’t have to test me Lord!)

From a professional standpoint, though, I think I know what the problems were and I don’t even need to see the grant reviews or committee comments (though I will be looking at them soon). There’s only one of me and branching off into a new direction three years ago to pursue some new ideas took time away from my core program, and I think both suffered a bit as a result. That happens, and I can learn from that experience.

I’ll have to meet with my research team and students next week and give them the bad news. We’re going to need to probably have some difficult conversations about working through this, and I know this will hit some of them hard too.

It might also mean some scholarly pruning. It might mean turning off a few ideas to focus more on the basic cognitive science that’s most important to me.

Congratulations to everyone who got good news this month. Successful grants, acceptance into med school, hired, or published. Success was earned. And for those of us getting bad news: accept it, deal with it, and progress.

Now enjoy the weekend everyone.