The Importance of Sharing our Failures
In academia, research, education, and often in wider society, we can become swamped by the ‘success story’ narrative. Where, through the influence of mediums such as social media, we often see a lot of stories of people obtaining grants, publishing papers, attaining promotions, new jobs and so on. In the world of academia especially, this narrative of high rates of success is false. But by being exposed to it continually, it exacerbates a lot of the pressures, stress, mental health issues and emotional turbulence that are associated with our industry. Here, postdoctoral scientist Giulia Guiducci highlights why it is important to share our failures to help re-contextualise this success story portrayal.
“Have you ever thought about why, in the moments of highest happiness, we cry? ”
Have you ever thought about why, in the moments of highest happiness, we cry?
Indeed, inside the tears there is often pain, sacrifice, vindication. A perfect example of this is observing the victory of athletes: after crossing the finish line, there are a few seconds of silence, then the result is displayed on a screen and the winners shout at loud; and often they cry. I personally find the expression on their face as emotional as their performance and in that moment I kind of feel a slight connection with them. Indeed, the tears flow down from eyes full of pain, suffering, sometimes anger.
Yet, the day after, the press deals only with the sport performance, which, given the editorial context, is fair enough.
Research is not so different from sport (something we have previously wrote about here). Scientists spend most of their time at the bench facing disappointment, frustration, and sacrifice. Yes, you probably have read this sentence a thousand times (and will probably read it many more thousands of times) and you find it a boring clichè. Yet, although we are all aware of the tough life and times of researchers in academia, the stories told on the social media deal mainly with victories, awarded grants, published papers. In this way, our industry is, again, similar to that of the sporting world. Very few times do we happen to read a story about burn out, disappointment, resignation, failure, or rejection. The difference here is that we are the masters of our own posts on social media and of how to tell our stories, in other words: we shape the reality. The picture of research painted on social media is thus distorted and unbalanced towards unanimous and glorified success, neglecting the dark side of this job. It is absolutely right to celebrate a victory, but it is also fair to share the hardest moment of our career.
Does this story sound familiar? Does it resonate?
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“ There is no joy, no real happiness without having known sacrifice, pain, suffering. This is the reason why we cry in the most touching moments of joy. ”
Illustration by Simone Colongo (@sim_uan)
My career, for instance, started in a relatively deleterious manner, suffering from academic burnout during my first internship as a master student. I was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. The environment I was working in not only sucked out my passion for science but also made me believe I was not good enough for a career in this industry. Fortunately, I quit that internship before it was too late. Although I perceived my choice of quitting as a total failure, and, in retrospect, it was a bit of a failure in that moment. I was so ashamed about what happened that I told my story only to the closest colleagues/friends (of course no posts on Twitter nor Facebook). Few years later I found out that such experiences are very common in the academic environments, however they remain mostly untold.
A while later, I was fortunate to find a good working environment which allowed my career to take off and, more importantly, allowed me to believe in myself again. Every time I publish a paper now, I look back at those tough moments, and while they still hurt, they help me enjoy my achievements way more. As the saying goes, it is the tough times, that makes the good times better.
Sharing our difficulties allows us to receive support but also to give support to scientists at all career stages (e.g. students, early career researchers or whoever may struggle as we are) and even inspire them. This article is meant to be an ode to real life, real people, and real feelings. There is no joy, no real happiness without having known sacrifice, pain, suffering. This is the reason why we cry in the most touching moments of joy. It is important to make this clear to students and early career researchers, to not let them believe that the problems they experience are unusual and to not create a false positive perception of what academia and research is like. For all of its faults, social media can be a great environment to start sharing such life experiences easily, thus providing a more realistic picture of scientists and science.
If you liked our article then we would welcome feedback and support. Sharing this article far and wide would really help! If you are interested in writing an article for us, want to learn more about our speaking and mentoring events/programmes or simply want to get in touch about something else, follow the highlighted links. We are also on twitter @Insideacademic and on instagram as @inside.academia.
written by: Dr Giulia Guiducci
Illustration by: Simone Colongo (@sim_uan)
twitter: @GiuGuiducci
edited by: Dr. Robert Seaborne
