This week’s blog comes by request.
What disappointment do i mean?
I think it is first important to define what we mean by disappointment in academia because honestly there is a lot of it. Your boss can disappoint, your colleagues and co-workers, your mentors, your students, rejection of promotion or job applications, and rejection from publishers in the form of journals or book publications can disappoint. You can disappoint you, and often you do - the paper was not quite what you wanted to say; that class went badly; I could have handled that disgruntled student better; that research project did not go quite how I intended it to…the list is endless.
Honestly, academia is one profession where your opportunities for disappointment surround every single aspect of your daily job, and I can’t think of another quite like it. It is why people like email so much - a refuge and safe harbour from disappointment. The one thing you need to do to thrive as a academic is first to accept you are in a job full of disappointments, both large and small and then work out a way to (a) rationalise that disappointment relative to your resources and (b) find a way to move forward swiftly. That seems like cold comfort I know, but it is best to get that out there first.
This request actually related to something specific and that was about funding, so that is what I will focus on here.
Disappointment or rejection from grant applications
For some scholars, the start of the new calendar year marks a moment where grant decisions are made, and success or failure is handed out in the form of (un)welcome emails. The majority of emails received will be negative decisions, so let’s get some context.
In 2022, the main grants for ECRs in the humanities in the UK had a success rate of: 21% (ESRC); 20% (BA); 26% (AHRC -but this is whole grant ecosystem); and if you can even still access this in Brexit UK, 16% ERC.
This should make for sober, yet informed, reflection. Your chances of success are relatively small and - this is anecdotal as i don’t have the figures to hand - the same applicants, in my experience, tend to get grants from the same bodies over and over again. You see it all the time - some people get grant after grant after grant and barely appear in the classroom their entire careers, and others never get a single grant funded. The system favours the repeat players, who have found the language and happen to be in the research vein that is consistently topping the agenda for that research body, or indeed those scholars who look first at the agenda of the grant awarding body and make that their research interest.
Those who get a grant are hardly ever first time applicants - and those who do get grants have usually been heavily supported by:
sight of past successful grant applications - several if possible - for the same grant they are applying to;
a well resourced and effective research support office who help with drafting;
intensive and useful grant writing workshops, run by people who know the scoring system and give individual review of your application;
and/or someone who is employed by a University as a grant writer - this is all they do, over and over, and are the ultimate repeat players;
a University infrastructure primed to win grants over and over again
What does this look like? Swift internal decision making in a one-stop shop; publication of grant opportunities to staff in a targeted and logical manner; and deadlines advertised well in advance. The opposite of a supportive grant application environment is rounds upon rounds of internal reviews that give the applicant only 1-2 weeks to draft a grant from start to finish, when the actual interval needed is 6 months at least; and prioritisation of bureaucratic quality control review systems that neither introduce quality or control. Back end systems - such as adequate financial control and disbursement, swift recruitment processes and teaching relief so that researchers can actually do the research they are paid for - are all necessary to produce an environment conducive to winning grants.
So the first thing to consider in managing the disappointment is to ask - to what extent did I have access to this support? What were the chances of my being successful in the environment I currently reside? Did I have sight of successful applications so I could copy the language employed? It is not all down to the single lone scholar’s brilliance, or how deserving their project is. How many times have you tried and received good feedback from the grant provider that you incorporated next time? You might need 10 applications to get 1 grant. Did you address the reasons given last time out? Do you yet have the back catalogue of publications that serve as a proxy for research reputation in that area of study?
As someone who has been behind the scenes and acted as a grant reviewer, I am always surprised by the relative weight given to each element of the application, and scoring the project idea is a relatively minuscule element of the overall decision scoring process, contrary to what most applicants think when they are writing out the application. It would be much more help if the scoring sheets were made public, rather than the somewhat generic guidance put out there by funding bodies in their stead.
Moving on
Once you understand the likelihood of getting a positive funding decision in context, I think it is easier to swallow the rejection and decide: what can i do about it? Now I know all the things I need, where do I go to get them? Does it mean tapping into networks, getting a different job, moving to somewhere that has the support mechanisms - if this is what you need for your research career, this is a serious question to answer. Ultimately, given the list of things that increase my chances, what can I do to acquire them?
Taking action, taking the appropriate steps to understand rejection in its context, feedback and the context in which it occurs, is how you move forward and improve your odds next time out. This is to me the best way to cope with disappointment, not a passive stage of licking your wounds and feeling bad - though you are entitled to do that for a day or two - but taking action and moving forward knowing the odds of success increase each time out if you learn from the feedback you are given.