Over time I have learned a number of lessons about rejection, whether professional or personal. Over time, I realise that rejection has gotten easier to deal with and in fact, an impetus for many of my wins.
Let me share a few of these lessons.
A thread.
1. A 'no' is a good answer. It is better to receive a no than no answer at all. What with many applicants never hearing back or socially, loved ones who don't say they are leaving.
When you receive or hear a no, that's a good start.
Now, to work on dealing with it.
2. I have learned to apply myself fully to everything I set myself to doing, whether or not there will be a rejection at the end.
I realised that this has been one of the ways I have built my skills, my resilience, and socially, my ability to love. The end notwithstanding.
3. I have grown to a point where reading rejection emails, letters, messages is not cringeworthy.
I have learned to read rejection-related reviews with the objective of doing better than best the next time.
In the process, I have learned to be a better reviewer myself.
4. More times than I can mention, rejection has come because (quite literally) there is a better chance ahead.
This has been evident many times in my life and it has helped to simply accept that 'it is not yet time' or 'this may not be it'.
5. I cannot emphasize enough the need not to overlook the process, even as we seek the result.
Some of my best wins have required significant work behind the scenes. Yet, even if I didn't win, the amount of work would have still been well worth it.
6. Does rejection still pinch? Of course - almost always. But if I didn't feel bad about it, perhaps it wasn't important.
We feel bad about things that mean something to us. And indeed, those are the things we should be expending time & energy on. & this isn't a waste of time.
7. A side effect of learning how to take rejection, is that one becomes empathetic to others when you are in a position of delivering rejection yourself.
8. Lastly, a technique I've used time & time again, is to be involved in important projects. When rejection comes, it doesn't take away from fact that you're still doing important work& that your skills are valuable.
Even if no one reminds you, your work does. Remember that.
So, rejection hurts & can be destabilizing in some instances, but I hope that you put in the work anyway, and you show up anyway.
In the end, that place or that person many not have accepted you, but you are even better than you were because you did not quit.
Keep going. 💓
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The discourse here over the past day has shown, once again, how we get emotionally blackmailed into poor relationships, bad marriages, & retaining harmful relations.
These 'curses' and 'lack of blessings' that we are so much afraid of seem to be curiously one sided.
This is how people can disappear from their families for 20+ years then show up one day & you're expected to receive them b/c they are now "elders".
How you have to "vumilia tu" when your emotional, mental & sometimes physical life is at stake b/c "you were blessed by wazees".
This is how abusers will show up eons later to ask for help (financial or otherwise) and you are expected to 'forget the past' because 'they are now 'older and wiser'.
This is actually the best part, for me.
Here's why:
- You are onto something if you find that someone else has thought/is thinking about the same thing. Don't quit, instead:
- Read the related papers, chances are that their angle isn't yours. And if it is, go through >
<their recommendation for future work. Good researchers would have this as a section in their paper. It provides insight into some of the potential research areas that you can explore.
In short, there's LOTs of research ideas to go around, infinitely. You just need to look.
A respected leader in Comp Sci education (my field) published a paper in the same week I was submitting my PhD thesis, essentially questioning the approach that was my entire framework.
My supervisors & I talked abt it as it was important that I don't ignore this contribution..
I have just completed running a seminar with 145 participants, 78% students and the rest staff. While we had some slight technical issues at the start, we had an excellent 2.5 hours and I'd like to share some pointers for large virtual seminars.
- Choose a platform that doesn't require you to admit each participant one by one. E.g. Google meet usually asks for one by one admission.
- Automatically mute all participants and only the host should unmute those who speak. Zoom and others have this feature.
- Include audience interaction to enable audience try out things and also participate in quizzes. Today I used Kahoot for a game, Direct Poll for a live poll, and Zoom polling for an after section exercise.
It's possible to write your thesis/papers to be interesting & fun. It's a myth that academic writing has to be bland & boring.
It's possible if you treat (& do) your work with passion & then learn how to communicate your science as you would a story.
Definitely not possible if someone else does (all) the work for you. 😊
I'll give a few pointers here that are not at all exhaustive. Other academics and researchers can add too.
1. If you were to use an analogy to explain your work - If we put aside the technical aspect for a minute & pick a real-world example of what you're trying to do. Do that.
The first class debate has shown what a lot of people think of high academic achievers, & it's sad.
"those uptight folks", "they think they are the best", "entitled", "lack life skills", etc.
What do you want people to do with their good grades? Hang them on an alphabet board?
It's almost as if people go to school to deliberately get low(er) grades so that they are not deemed as all of the above.
It's almost as if people send their kids to school but with a disclaimer: "don't come here with high grades."
As if.
It is naive to assume that b/c a student has high grades then they lack other skills. This is a gross generalization at best. Not the least b/c all categories undergo the same system. And as @DrCarrieM mentioned, Universities aren't exactly doing all they can for bright students.
Kenya would not be plug and play. It would require 47 different types of drivers to be installed for it to function - but only 3 of them would work as described on the package. The rest would often make the hardware unusable, forcing the users to find alternative manufacturers.
Uganda would be a non-Qwerty keyboard that has been used for over 30 yrs. And even though everyone else has long upgraded to modern keyboards, that are wireless, with backlight, and even foldable, its users are stuck with numerous wires, & hardware they cannot use in a blackout.