The Need for Bounce

What would you feel if someone described you as a ‘demoralised pile of pulp’? I was distinctly taken aback by this extreme phrase, describing myself – by myself. It referred to the ‘me’ I had been a year previous to the moment of writing, during the time I had been a spectacularly unsuccessful postdoc. The phrase turned up in one of a large pile of letters written to my mother – perhaps I wrote a couple of times a week when I was in the US; email had not yet been invented – which I had rescued from her house after her death four years ago. I’d read many of the ones (curiously also in her house) that she had written to me at different stages, but I hadn’t worked through most of my own. After all, I thought I knew what had happened to me.

However, those visceral words written at the time have to be more accurate than the memories of that period forty years later. My first postdoc was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, ranging from culture shock at arriving in the USA to a project that couldn’t turn out the way intended because the crucial equipment (the Cornell Synchrotron) was not yet ready. The electron microscopy project I did instead did not suit me, and personnel issues left me feeling stranded.  I was, in other words, a failure, completely lacking in motivation.

I read with interest the recent THE article touching on failure by Joe Moran, in which he says

‘A CV of failures is a sweet and generous idea. But still it relies on the redemptive arc that treats failure as something that can always be spun into success. CVs of failure tend to be produced by tenured scholars. They make their failures public to inspire their more precarious junior colleagues to shrug off disappointment and continue their ascent to the professional heights.’

I’m sure I’ve been guilty of using my personal failure as an indicator that it is possible to pick oneself up from a crash, although I don’t think I learned a great deal directly from the experience, including how to avoid a similar disaster again.   Instead, in the case of my postdoctoral experience, it was a change of project and supervisor that transformed me almost overnight. I have letters to my mother from that period too, which confirms the incredible speed with which I (finally) fell in love with research, and the papers started flowing. In the letter from which I quote above, I am reflecting that it is only a year since I was that demoralised pile of pulp, yet now people had started talking to me of an academic career. I was trying to get my head round that and its implications.

What I do think I learned from my failure was a recognition that researchers can struggle for all kinds of reasons which may have little to do with innate talent. I hope that has made me more sympathetic to struggling students over the years. It may well be that their skills are not well-suited to the uncertainty of research, or that a specific project is in some way – as it was for me – ‘wrong’, not playing to their strengths. The motivation may be lacking – perhaps because their extracurricular activities excite them more, be it being an amateur DJ or getting involved with Pint of Science or other interactions with the public. And if it is the latter maybe academia is the wrong career in which to use their science. There are so many ways in which a scientific training can be used, and pursuing the uncertain trajectory that is an academic career may be an entirely mistaken path for any given individual. I wish more would enter politics and policy-making, because I’d like to think recent decisions around the current pandemic would have been better judged if MPs actually knew what ‘following the science’ meant, and how evidence, risk and modelling could be wisely used.

However, while Moran is undoubtedly right that

‘Failure is not always the stepping stone to success’,

the ability to pick oneself up from failure is a skill we all can benefit from, whatever the nature of that failure and whatever we choose to do next. It does not mean that perseverance will necessarily get you to that prize you thought you were aiming at – e.g. a permanent academic position – will transpire, but it may mean you can enjoy whatever does come along. That is a lesson we need to (re)learn all through our life. That grant rejection – whatever position of eminence you have achieved – will always hurt; the editor who turns down your carefully crafted manuscript may come across as if they have just blighted your entire life. After one particularly painful career crash on my part, my husband wisely said ‘you never know what’s around the corner’ as he whisked me off to Southwold for some windy and cold but calming sea-watching. And he was right – even if it turned out to be something very different from what I thought I was aiming at.

Picking oneself up is, unfortunately, not a one-size-fits-all activity. Every crash, every failure, will have its own pain, knock-on effects and way past or through. What got me through breaking delicate equipment early on in my PhD, causing me to walk away from Cambridge for a couple of weeks while I contemplated whether I wanted to keep on battling, was very different from what kept me going following my rejection by my department when it decided it didn’t want me to be their head.  What kept me going during those first two disastrous post-doctoral years at Cornell was, in part, nothing less than I needed a job to cover my visa while my husband completed his PhD (which was also the reason for finding a further postdoc to keep me legitimate during its third year). It was not great strength of character or having cracked the resilience barrier.

Resilience is a lesson one constantly has to relearn, perhaps now during dark, foggy and cold early winter pandemic days more than ever. Coping with current uncertainty, the lack of normal human contact – including literal contact in the form of familial hugs as well as the pleasure of a gossip over a cup of tea or a scientific brainstorming session at a (physical) whiteboard – is tough for just about everyone. Finding conversation topics that aren’t Covid-related, Brexit-related or damning politicians around the world, seems a challenge. Jokes about how Zoom conversations can go wrong have lost any amusement value they may once have had. It isn’t quite like an everlasting replay of Groundhog Day, because changing Government regulations move the chairs around a bit to keep us on our toes, but it feels as if we’ll never get out of the recurring loop of breakfast, Zoom all day, supper, sleep, occasionally leavened by a moderate alcohol intake and a bout of some sort of exercise – ideally not concurrently. I hope you can all find your way through this mire. 2020 will be a year to forget, except that for most of us it will be unforgettable.