Three paper rejection letters

#medSky #medstudentSky reminder: Failure is part success.

Today I was organizing some papers and found these 3 #rejection letters from medical school from Stanford, Yale, and UCSF.

Normalizing rejection is just as important as sharing your wins. #ShareyourRejection

#shareyourrejection is exactly the hashtag we need right now. Creatives on twitter demonstrate the reality of rejection in the arts, sharing their failures to reveal that for many, success is what happens after rejection. http://ow.ly/EbMh30lyUOl @ArtsHub HT @firstwritercom

Aktuell "Haben Sie überhaupt einen Studienabschluss?"
Menschen, die meinen CV und das Examenszeugnis vor sich lieben haben. Im Bewerbungsgespräch
#ShareYourRejection

"Ach, Sie haben ja gar nicht richtig Chemie studiert"
Wahlweise zu
"Ach, Sie haben ja nur Lehramt studiert"
Bei der Suche nach einer Stelle für eine Abschlussarbeit & Promotionsstelle
#ShareYourRejection

I was rejected by every US university I applied to except one. 50 companies rejected me on graduation. A Boston law firm rejected me because they didn't think internet law would earn them any money. And many many more #ShareYourRejection

20 years of rejection and counting.
(Wait am I doing this right?)
#ShareYourRejection

Desk rejected after seven months #ShareYourRejection

You’re needed somewhere. There’s a place for you. Keep going till you find it. When you get there, and you look back on the path you followed, you’ll realize it was always laid out in front of you. And all those signposts along the way will be glowing. /Fin #ShareYourRejection

Remember what Douglas Adams once wrote: “I may not have gotten where I meant to go, but I think I’ve wound up where I needed to be.” He wrote a lot of great things, but none truer than that. #ShareYourRejection

So, new lawyers: treasure your rejections. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s really not. Your rejections, your layoffs, your “failures,” are actually illuminated signposts directing you along the path to where you truly belong in this profession. #ShareYourRejection

But it was still a very hard lesson to learn. We’re taught that linear advancement, the consecutive flawless ticking of other people’s boxes, is what success looks like. It’s not. Getting off the wrong track early is what success (and good fortune) looks like. #ShareYourRejection

I was trying to do something I just wasn’t cut out to do. “Succeeding” would only have made me increasingly unhappy and simply delayed the inevitable point when I really had to go, probably with some significant damage done. #ShareYourRejection

But it really stung. It was my first serious professional “failure.” What took me years to realize was that it wasn’t actually a “failure” at all. #ShareYourRejection

A stellar Canadian BigLaw firm didn’t invite me back to be an associate after my articling year. It was absolutely the correct call. I would’ve been, at that stage of my life, a terrible lawyer. #ShareYourRejection 1/x

The countless times I’ve submitted to journals that didn’t even bother to reject the sub. And then the humiliation of submitting to those journals again with same outcome. #ShareYourRejection

Apparently we’re doing #ShareYourRejection ? I love my current PostDoc position with @LiberEroFellows at @sfu !

But it was the 18th PostDoc that I applied for. 12 months passed between my last PhD stipend and my first PostDoc paycheck.

This is not unusual.

#ShareYourRejection I've been told I'd never:
Graduate high school because I was terrible at math.
Make it to college.
Graduate college or finish certain classes

And a professional driving instructor went behind my back to a family member to tell them I'd never be able to drive.

I was rejected in the final round of two major post-doc fellowships in my field (Omohundro NEH, MCEAS). Also rejected after making the short list for the OAH Lerner-Scott Prize. I have been rejected for about forty academic jobs...and yet, here I am. #ShareYourRejection