Reader Crystallizing Chaos asked the following question:

It would be great if you could share your thoughts on how you handle failure. I know you’re amazing at what you do and a very successful academic but you must have faced failure or rejection (professional) in the past. How did you deal with it?

First of all, thank you very much for the compliments I greatly enjoy them. 🙂

Rejection is a staple of an academic’s life. Can’t handle rejection? Don’t become an academic. 

Have oral stage traumas? (Smoke, drink, overeat, etc.?) Prepare for every rejected article to feel like the people of the world have unanimously agreed to kick you off the planet for being a total waste of space. And then experience the collective kick of 7,5 billion people.

I’ve worked very hard on this with my psychoanalyst and I’m happy to report that these days rejections feel like only half of the people in this world have agreed to kick me off the planet with the rest abstaining. Give me a few more years, and maybe the number of the kick-offers will be reduced to 1/3 of the planet’s population.

No, seriously, it gets better with time. By the time I turn 92, I will have gotten so many rejections that I will be totally jaded to the whole process.

I’m sorry if this isn’t too helpful but at least we are all in the same boat, suffering from rejection. That’s got to be somewhat comforting, right?

Some resources that you might find marginally helpful:

Here is Jonathan’s post on handling rejection with some useful suggestions.

Here is something really helpful my husband once said to help me deal with getting an article rejected.

Here is my old post from when I was getting nothing but rejections.

It is finally becoming clear why our state’s universities are being forced into the open-access model:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a major supporter of health and development research, is to introduce an open access policy next month for the studies it funds that goes further than most other research funders. From the start of 2017, researchers funded by the foundation will be required to publish their scientific papers and underlying data in publications that allow immediate free access without subscription or payment. The material must also be reusable without permission or fee.

Bill Gates and his offensively stupid foundation must have bribed somebody (or everybody) in our state legislature. The foundation has long been striving to destroy research in this country, and this is simply another step in that direction.

 

Here is an interesting article with economic predictions for 2015. I agree with all of them except #1. But that’s probably because it’s worded too emotionally.

There is also a great link within that link which offers a very good explanation for the wage stagnation in the US. The short resume: irrespective of how much the GDP grows in the US, wages will not experience significant growth until we acquire the kind of skills that somebody in China or elsewhere isn’t offering much more cheaply. In short: massive and intensive education for the majority will win world dominance for whomever wants it.

Charles Hill, a business school professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, penned a recent blog entry looking at a change in local police tactics intended to reduce the demand for the service of sex workers.

Since the only way to reduce a person’s demand for sex is by having sex with that person, I find it very entertaining how these poor police officers go about such a task. Isn’t it entirely ridiculous that a state would waste money and manpower on such completely ridiculous tasks? Are there no actual criminals for the police to investigate?