Above: Actually, I think I did.
In academia, you need to demonstrate the ability to publish your research. After all, how is anyone supposed to learn about your earth-shattering contributions to knowledge if you don’t/can’t actually publish them? Unfortunately, the publication process is predictably drawn out and often rather painful. To begin, you submit your manuscript to a journal via a document management system. If your article falls within the scope of the journal and avoids an automatic reject from the editorial desk, the system then (very slowly) passes the manuscript on to a reviewer.
A reviewer is someone with a background in at least some areas addressed by your research, as identified by their publication record and keywords you provided. The idea is that given their relative familiarity with the subject, they’ll be in a position to adequately assess the quality of your work. They scrutinize your words line by line, giving feedback that is frequently accompanied by a lengthy list of requested changes. They then (after maaaaaaany weeks or even months) provide the editor in charge with one of three recommendations:
Reject. This is not publishable material. Your work is garbage. Set this on fire and never let it see the light of day ever again. Alternatively, submit it somewhere else.
Accept. Hurrah, you’re one of the select few deemed of such authority that your work is uniformly welcomed and praised by peer reviewers.
Revise and resubmit (R&R). Your work is mostly garbage but if you revise it in these 36 different ways, it may be reconsidered for publication.
Typically, each manuscript is sent to three reviewers. In my expansive lived experience with rejection, this trio of reviewers will nearly always be bipolar. That is, one will love your work; one will hate it and tell you it’s trash; and one will hesitantly recommend publication but only with substantial revision (an R&R). In these cases, the editor will make the final decision following your revision and resubmission – and typically levy a rejection.
Keep in mind that publication is critical to securing academic job positions. Without an active publication record, you really can’t compete. When it came to my own work, I beat my head against the proverbial wall as I fielded R&R after R&R. And that’s how, after six years or so, I finally learned it’s okay to walk away.
My own research was a study of patterns of international cooperation in global oil politics. I mapped major changes in these patterns to the market price of oil, making them predictable. I was not at all the first to do this work, but I aimed to show how analyses of patterns could be broadened to include countries whose position in energy politics had shifted over time.
I believed in the value of this work: it challenged conventional Cold War-era analyses and updated them for the politics of today. It compared the behaviour of the Chinese government to that of the United States in historical perspective, showing how similar they were. It explained exactly why, how, and when cooperation was possible between the two energy juggernauts and (then-)potential political rivals. This cooperation could achieve a transformation in energy politics and global energy systems, by extension.
I believed in this work so much that I thought about a single research question for five straight years. It excited me. My mind circled my subquestions, pecking away relentlessly. I made research my life. I loved nothing more than piecing together the skeleton of a study, rationalizing my choices, and building a world in my head.
But when I went to write my study up in the format of a journal article, I just couldn’t seem to lay everything out in a way that demonstrated the value of my work. I’d married two studies from different disciplines to create the basis for my own, and it all seemed to need far more explanation than I could shoehorn into a 10,000-word article.
Over and over again, I excised various excerpts from my dissertation and pieced them together. Over and over again, I rearranged them on the page, turning them inside out and upside down as I tried to think of how to explain things in a way that would bring everything together. I made lists of top journals in one discipline, then another, and submitted my manuscript over and over again.
Over and over again, it was returned. Revise and resubmit.
Around the same time, I began applying to academic jobs. These kinds of jobs are in university departments or research centres that have their own research agendas. You need to figure out what they already have on hand and position your work as speaking directly to it. Oh, you already have someone who does energy politics? Well, they do it from a climate change perspective. My perspective centres on oil politics, which is completely different. But also totally within the scope of your interest.
In fact, you can dump hours upon hours of your life into figuring out how to present yourself and your work. What do they need? What could they be looking for? Sometimes, universities will provide a bulleted list of the kinds of competencies a researcher needs to demonstrate and in those cases, you need to specify how you demonstrate each one. But it’s more common for there to be no such list at all and you end up simply casting about, sending fishing e-mails to faculty and digging into university websites to piece together how to present yourself as The Ideal Job Candidate to do something of which you’re not entirely sure.
All of this can add up to endless weeks spent just collecting information. After that, you’ve got to write up a research statement and your teaching portfolio and perhaps even a proposal with a vision of exactly how you’re going to follow your research into the future and disseminate it to public.
Again and again, I tried to articulate all the incredible things my research would do for the field. Again and again, my applications were rejected.
“It’s promising,” they said. “Try again next year.”
Revise and resubmit.
Months passed and years slipped away. My monthly paycheques ended when I submitted my dissertation and I found myself without any income at all. I ended up taking a teaching contract at an international school as I waited for more positions to hit the job market. It turned out they were few and far between.
Fine, I thought. I’ll turn my dissertation into a book. THAT’s how I’ll finally publish. I chipped away at the manuscript, trying to sort through how I’d turn it into something someone might want to actually read at length. Once I had a clear idea and most of the manuscript complete, I turned to figuring out how to write a book proposal.
After teaching all day, I spent my nights and weekends tinkering with the various elements of my proposal. This manuscript had to succeed. I targeted a handful of university presses and a few trade publishers that I knew for a fact published anything half decent. I spent time figuring out which publisher series would be the best fit for my work, then pulling apart my ideas and knitting them back together in a way that would make it seem as though my work was a perfect fit.
Revise and resubmit.
“It’s not so bad,” one mildly interested editor commented. “But if you want a chance, you’re going to need to rewrite the introduction chapter.”1
In that moment, I knew. I knew I could not reimagine the work, reconfigure myself, one more time. I knew I was done. I knew my academic career was over.
It’s hard to put words to the toll that years of rejection takes, especially after experiencing a measure of success. Acutely aware that even the tiniest mistake could cost you a chance at a permanent, tenure-track position, you become obsessive about checking and checking again (I once drank a beer while working on an application to a university in Australia that I uncharacteristically submitted after re-reading only three or four times. The next day, during my fifth re-reading, I cried when I noticed a typo. I’d been less than perfect; that beer came at a price).
You become determined to reconfigure not just your work, but yourself. You take your ideas apart, reforming them to align with this focus or that. You take your life history apart, piecing it back together again to form the most linear narrative – one that seems to naturally lead directly into the job position you want. See? I’ve always been the kind of person you want. My work has always spoken directly to yours. My life has always fed directly into my work. I’m exactly who you want me to be.
Every submission is your livelihood hanging in the balance. Even if you’re pursuing a backup plan, you’ll put it on hold the minute something better comes through. So you revise who you are and what you think again and again and again. Then submit.
Offer yourself up for assessment, for approval, one more time.
Revise and resubmit.
Eventually, you don’t know who you are anymore. And you certainly don’t know what you think. Nothing you do is good enough to pass the assessment, to earn the approval, to secure the opportunity. Really, it’s you who isn’t good enough. Friends who didn’t have a baby during their PhD program and wisely cultivated professional networks instead fall into secure positions all around the world – positions that grant them financial security and job security and life security. But not you.
Revise and resubmit.
All I can really say about ending that cycle is you have to simply stop. You have to stop offering up yourself for assessment. Stop and find something else to do. For anyone prone to hyperfocus, whose mind needs to be engaged with the work that they do, this can be almost physically painful. I had to pull my mind back from wanting to follow my research through. I had to give up on the idea of its value justifying everything else. Even if it had value, that value wasn’t worth what I was putting myself through.
And of course, none of us should have to go to such extremes just to land a decent job. But in today’s job market, in today’s increasingly AI-riddled world, the odds are that anyone engaged in knowledge work will eventually have to go to extremes. Many of us have already learned, via dating apps, how to contort ourselves into the ideal potential partner. Many of us have learned, via the job market, how to frame ourselves and our resumes in ways that will get past an AI-based sorter. Post-Digital Revolution, I’m not sure any of us can escape the demands of fitting ourselves into a pre-defined mould that appeases an algorithm or pleases an employer in a job market oversaturated with applicants.
In the end, it seems that the rarest of commodities will become us – ourselves – in our natural, unmodified state. In a state that reflects who we really are, not masking some marker that would identify us as somehow less-than-desirable or ideal.
Imperfection is a revolutionary act, I keep telling myself. I’m a failed academic, and that’s perfectly okay. It’s okay if I don’t “live up to my potential,” whatever that was supposed to be (what was it, anyway?). It’s okay if all I want to do is sit here on this bed, typing away into a void for a handful of people to read just because it helps me sort out my thoughts. It’s okay if I “accomplish” absolutely nothing in life, so long as I feel perfectly pleased with myself while I’m doing so.
Because the alternative, the cycle of asking and failing to receive approval, the cycle of adjusting and adapting yourself again and again and again, just isn’t worth what it costs. In the end, you won’t remember what your original ideas were. In the end, you’ll lose all sense of self. And if rarity is what determines value, as it often does, then you’ll have offered up the most valuable things you have in return for nothing at all.
Read more about my failure in life here:
This is the chapter that frames everything. It tells the reader why what you’re talking about matters and how you’re going to talk about it. Rewriting your introduction chapter is basically redoing everything.
I always like the truth and realism in your writing.
Sometimes we just don't win, regardless of being so sure that there is value in our work. It could be for all sorts of reasons, but the truth is that at times, it doesn't matter how good one is. The game is just so restrictive, barriers to entry too high, and the degree to which you must change yourself to stand a chance may just invalidate the point of it all.
You write well, Leah. Even more importantly, you write in way that makes sense to a lot of people. They can relate, even when they aren't exactly familiar with the specifics of the issue being discussed.
I remember that post where you reflect on how things have been hard, like how you almost didn't get US citizenship after losing your green card, while at the same time acknowledging your luck because someone from a different background may not have gotten that benefit of the doubt, all because of that background.
It takes a lot of understanding to see things from this angle, something which, frankly, many people from Western nations aren't particularly good at. I don't blame them, the realities of poorer nations aren't their problems to see. Still, it's not impossible to see if one wants to. From your writing, I can deduce that you do see.
Thank you, and please keep writing.
Forge ahead, Leah. Exorcising perfectionism might lead you to to realize winning isn't the big prize in life either. It seems you are on the road to being, which is a much better place.