The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

April 29, 2016 7:03 AM

Inspired by a column in Nature by Melanie Stefan, Princeton professor Johannes Haushofer keeps a CV of failures (PDF); he was interviewed by NPR about it this morning. Other examples of the form include: Bradley Voytek (PDF, skip to the end), Sam Lord (PDF), Alexandra Roshchina, and Sara Rywe (PDF). For non-academic examples, look at Srinivas Rao and Monica Byrne. Ironically, Melanie Stefan's CV page does not list failures.
posted by Cash4Lead (25 comments total)

Under Haushofer's "Meta Failures:"
"This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention than my entire body of academic
work"
posted by Floydd at 7:11 AM on April 29, 2016 [17 favorites]

If you all could see the comments I deleted before hitting post, you would know what a great job I am doing as a MeFi commenter.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:12 AM on April 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

This is so therapeutic right now, I cant even.

Bless these glorious academics.
posted by Blasdelb at 7:18 AM on April 29, 2016

Seems like humble-bragging to me.
posted by briank at 7:26 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've often heard stories like "so-and-so got rejected xx number of times!", but it's way more impact to see an actual list of the rejections, in all their repetitive humiliating glory -- somewhere between rejection #12 and rejection #13 of the list *I* get depressed. I can't imagine what it was like for the artist in question.
posted by Mogur at 7:30 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you all could see the comments I deleted before hitting post, you would know what a great job I am doing as a MeFi commenter.

If you could see the comments I posted that Mods deleted, you would - well, I don't know what you would do, or think. (Not that I'm keeping track, mind you.)
posted by IndigoJones at 7:34 AM on April 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

this reminds me that i need to apply for a job at Yale so I can complete the trifecta of rejections (after failed BA and PhD applications)
posted by dismas at 7:36 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

I loved this so much after I heard it this morning I sat right down with my healthy breakfast breakfast pie and started putting mine together. Only I was ambitious about my failure- I was also going to put down my science investigations that have failed, because I think that's also important.

Annnnnnnd after about half an hour I realized my failures so outnumbered my successes that I was getting depressed. So I wrapped it up with my own "meta" failure section: Couldn't finish my list of failures
posted by barchan at 7:50 AM on April 29, 2016 [14 favorites]

If I listed out all my failures, even if I just kept it to job rejections - I would fall into a deeper depression than I already was in from being terrible at jobhunting.
posted by divabat at 8:01 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure it's ironic that Stefan didn't post her "failure" CV given that she makes abundantly clear in her column that her CV doesn't list her failures. It'd only be ironic if one expected her to follow her own advice.
posted by blucevalo at 8:09 AM on April 29, 2016

Here's a poet's version
posted by Aubergine at 8:10 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

As a publish-or-perish academic, what's interesting to me is the number of Paper Title, Journal BC: rejected twice at Journal BC. In other words: the journal that eventually published it, rejected it twice first.

It takes a special kind of ambition* to keep pushing at a journal, again and again, that has rejected your paper. Being the straight-up kind of person, I take a reject as "go away, we are not publishing this". Not as a "try again, better luck next time". I do not have the "ambition" or what I would ordinarily think of as rudeness, or blind stupidity, to keep trying, and yet it works for those that do it! I have to wonder how much this inner-club knowledge? behavior? has impacted my career. So, so frustrating to feel like I am trying to play by the stated rules, and find out that I cannot win.

*a type of ambition that I would guess to be gendered, and the rewards for such ambition to be gendered as well. But we'll never know, as it's hidden in the private archives of journals.
posted by Dashy at 8:10 AM on April 29, 2016 [10 favorites]

I see your poet, Aubergine, and raise.
posted by clawsoon at 8:29 AM on April 29, 2016

It'd only be ironic if one expected her to follow her own advice.

Well, yeah. Usually the unstated assumption in advice is that the person giving advice has done it herself, and can thus testify to its effectiveness. Especially in this case, where professionals (and academics in particular) are expected to have CVs of successes, so it's not as if Stefan isn't in a position to produce a CV of failure if she wanted to. I don't want to press the point that much -- I don't think Stefan is a hypocrite for not publishing a failure CV -- but I just thought it was an odd thing worth mentioning.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:32 AM on April 29, 2016

@dashy I'm new to the world of academic publishing (just finishing up medical school) but isn't there a spectrum of rejection? My paper was recently rejected, but the comments were, for the most part, focused and seemed to imply "fix these things and resubmit". I'm guessing it also has to do with the fact that my paper was qualitative in nature, where as methodological failures might lead to immediate and permanent rejection fro more basic science.
posted by ghostpony at 8:53 AM on April 29, 2016

"So you're telling me you can only give our guys 45 hours?"
posted by lagomorphius at 8:55 AM on April 29, 2016

The title of this post is mine by birthright.
posted by y2karl at 8:57 AM on April 29, 2016

I think ghostpony is correct. Those paper rejections are the (new! fun!) 'accepted with major/minor revisions' so that the time to publish is kept (artificially) low for the journal. I wouldn't even count those on my rejection CV (that I'm definitely not putting together until I know that it doesn't just keep going forever).
posted by hydrobatidae at 9:00 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

NB: Post title comes from "Account" by Czeslaw Milosz.
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:12 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yes. Since I've been publishing since 2003, I am familiar with academic publishing.

There's indeed a spectrum of reject, hard-reject, soft-reject, reject with resubmit explicitly disallowed, reject with resubmission, and resubmission. In my experience, any kind of "reject with resubmission" is not referred to as an actual rejection.
posted by Dashy at 9:13 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

but what I want is the same thing from people who are not actually successful
posted by sylvanshine at 9:29 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

Somewhere on the internet I read the following (best read in a Woody Allen voice):


I have a feeling my manuscripts would even be turned down for self-publishing.

Think of the rejection letter.

"You regret to inform myself that my manuscript does not meet your publishing needs at this time."
posted by lalochezia at 9:58 AM on April 29, 2016

This is so so good and very inspiring. I know many people have told me it's important to take risks, etc, but it's never been made so concrete as this. So many things I haven't done because I didn't think I would get to the top right out of the gate.
posted by maggiemaggie at 11:59 AM on April 29, 2016

It rings a bell : a French song by René Baer, La Chambre (lyrics).
posted by nicolin at 9:58 AM on April 30, 2016

On m'a prêté quatre vieux murs
Pour y loger mes quatre membres
Et, dans ce réduit très obscur,
Je voulus installer ma chambre.

/adds 'Failed FR201, 202; can only ask for and give child-like directions to football stadiums' to CV
posted by obiwanwasabi at 11:15 PM on May 1, 2016