They said no - now what?

Academic rejection can be painful - how do we get over it? Plus, the Music Highlight

Photo by Greta Pichetti on Unsplash

How many times will we hear no in our academic careers? How can we handle it and how can we build upon it?

Appyling for the PhD

Some PhD programs ask you to prepare a proposal and find your own supervisor(s) - like mine did. I heard a year and a half of no until I found mine - how about you? I am glad I took all the rejections and kept going - otherwise I would never have found my amazing supervisors that I have today.

Were you ever rejected during the application process and how did you handle it?

You can read more about my finding a supervisor adventures in this mini review:

Submitting for publication

This is probably one of the most common rejections one can get during their PhD career - and after. Everyone told me it is almost expected to happen multiple times.

I do not have any publications to my name up until today (PhD publications not, but other publications as an ELT educator yes). I have recently submitted my first article for the third time and now we are waiting. It is not the best feeling in the world, also depending on the way the feedback is written - but you just take the comments into consideration, talk them over with your supervisors, make the corrections - and go for it again! And again and again. It is a learning process.

How do you handle journal rejections? Has it ever happened to you?

Submitting for conferences

This can happen pretty often too. What should we do? Keep your chin up and resubmit! Submit to the same conference the year after (it has happened to me, of course I went with a different topic the next year - but I submitted the first rejected one to another conference and I was accepted elsewhere!) Again, it can be a learning process, especially if the conference organisers take the time to give you detailed feedback. It has happend to me that they have also sent me references on what to read additionally, along with the comments, which was great and very generous of them!

What do you do with conference rejections?

The Music Highlight

Moving on from last week’s 90s song, we move a teeny tiny bit earlier to the late 80s, 1989 specifically and to a fantastic track - and voice! Enjoy : )