I need a recovering from setbacks pep talk

[Closetlibrarian]

So, along with feeling generally emotionally ground down by the strike action, I've had a couple of other setbacks in the past week: didn't get short listed for a job and had a grant application rejected. Now, the job app was a long-shot, pie-in-the-sky one that would have meant relocating the family, so I'm not so upset about that. But it did dent my self-esteem. The grant though, we thought, was a really solid bid and were in with a good chance. Very timely topic. It would have been the 'right' moment in my career to get it and I was excited about working on the project and with my co-i/ collaborators. So, I'm feeling utterly, utterly deflated at not getting it.

In a moment when I'm already questioning why the hell I do this job, especially with the pension threat looming, I need a pick me up.

I know this stuff happens to us all the time. I've had plenty of rejections over the course of my 10 years in academia, some of them big some of them small. But still, cheer me up with tales of glory you have gone on to achieve in the face of such knocks. Please...

can't say i've got much glory but have had plenty of rejections.

my record is 6 journals rejecting one of my best papers before it finally got published. and just this morning I was musing on a grant rejected 8 years ago that would still have been a nice project.

have a nice glass of wine / cup of tea & ignore them all for a bit.

Really feel for you. At least you are still in the game!?! Does that help (probably not)? I got so demoralised by a series of rejects a couple of years ago that I backed off from writing altogether, which is the very worst thing I could have done. Really concentrated on impact, have done pretty well with that and have a sort of public profile in what I do, but now I feel like a doubly large imposter as an academic. And I am having to write my arse off for the next 8 months to be in with any chance for the REF. Not sure what I am saying other than I feel for you, but I guess .... feel the fear and keep on doing it anyway?

Thanks both. Yes, still in the game! Plenty of other irons in the fire, I guess. But still, I had thought we were in with such a good shot with this bid. It felt so timely and, I thought, a well-written bid.

I do despair of ever getting funding. I'm in the humanities, and my research doesn't naturally lend itself to funding bids (I mostly just need time, and libraries). This felt like the first genuinely interesting, fundable idea I'd had in a long time. So part of me is thinking - if this didn't get funding, I have absolutely no idea what will.

Hey ho... Onwards...

I know somebody will have said this to you already but can it be reworked for a different funding body?

No other funding body offers funding for this type of activity. But I expect that I will eventually rework the content of the bid to fit a different type of research activity/ funding stream. So yes, it's certainly not all for nothing, I hope. Something will come out of it, even if it's just a couple of outputs I write based on the research issue/ topic that was at the core of the funding bid.