Post #1: Our own rejection collection

This winter, as the Vermont temperatures have dropped to some recently historic lows (lots of wind chill in the negatives, Fahrenheit), we’ve had a spurt of rejection in our group. Speaking for myself, I received multiple rejections - for applications sabbatical fellowships, an NSF grant, and a paper – all within a few weeks. Amid this flowering of failure, I learned about Rejection Collections. A Rejection Collection is a bouquet of failures that a group agrees to share with one another, and I think it’s a brilliant idea. So we, the Ecocultural Values group along with a few other researchers at UVM, are starting our own rejection collection. What is a rejection collection? It’s pretty simple:

•  Create a spreadsheet where everyone in the group can record all their rejections – of journal articles, of grant applications, of fellowship positions, etc.
• Whenever anyone on the team gets a rejection, they enter it. (We’ve added a column for a few words on how we feel about it, and a column for an emoji that we feel is related.) Almost certainly, reminding yourself of a large quantity of collective failure will be helpful.
• When the team gets too 50 rejections total, collectively, have a party. (Others have themed the party after some relevant topic; I have reserved the right to choose something funky from the list and make that the theme.)​

I first learned of the concept from a radio news program by KQED in California (my parents heard it and implored me to listen; they were spot on about how helpful it was). The program interviews Barbara Sarneka, a UC Irvine psychology professor who speaks beautifully, humbly, and convincingly about the power of the rejection collection. A recent article in The Atlantic also describes the concept and why Sarneka created it. There are multiple reasons, and they all seem quite powerful to me. Reasons for a rejection collection include:

• There’s a “pluralistic ignorance” phenomenon that happens with academic rejection. We’re all getting rejected roughly 90% of the time, but we only hear about others’ success. So from where we’re sitting, it appears that everyone else is successful 100% of the time. But it’s almost certain that nobody is. A rejection collection makes obvious just how much we all try for things we do not get.
• It makes the rejection experience a shared one. We are not alone in this. It’s just part of the job, part of the field. We’re in it together.
• It reframes the whole experience of rejection. This is the most powerful part for me. A rejection collection shifts the goal from something you cannot control – whether you get what you’ve tried for -- to what you can – whether you tried. Whether you put yourself out there and went for it.

 
So, we’re trying it. We started the clock retroactively (because let’s face it, we want to have a party sooner – AND it will be easier to enter rejections when there’s a solid pillow of them there at the top of the spreadsheet). Sarnecka suggests, and practices, three toasts at the rejection parties. We’re definitely going to follow her lead on this as well. In a few months, I’m looking forward to toasting:

• Ourselves, for trying
• All the unnamed people who dedicated time and energy to review our failed applications, and
• Everyone who got the things we didn’t get. Because, to quote Sarnecka (from the Atlantic article): “All of us who are sincerely trying to understand the world and teach others are on the same team.”