Putting Things in Perspective with a CV of Failures
When we look at successful people, whether they be Olympic athletes, or successful entrepreneurs or scientists, we often only see the final product, and not the work that was put into getting to where they are now. More importantly, we don’t see the failures or setbacks that they experienced along the way.
Even on a daily basis, we experience a similar form of this through social media. Browsing through any form of social media, we see only the highlights of what people are willing to post. In many cases, social media posts are often specious. Given that many people are doing this at the same time, it is easy to feel inadequate.
It is of course not true that everyone else’s lives are always more interesting and exciting than ours, or that successful people were always successful. It is also not true that the successes that people - especially scientists - list on their curriculum vitae (CV) are the whole story. As Melanie Stefan writes:
My CV does not reflect the bulk of my academic efforts — it does not mention the exams I failed, my unsuccessful PhD or fellowship applications, or the papers never accepted for publication. At conferences, I talk about the one project that worked, not about the many that failed
Although this is especially true for scientists, it applies everywhere else as well:
As scientists, we construct a narrative of success that renders our setbacks invisible both to ourselves and to others. Often, other scientists’ careers seem to be a constant, streamlined series of triumphs. Therefore, whenever we experience an individual failure, we feel alone and dejected. (Source)
Fortunately, many people do realize this. Johannes Haushofer, an assistant professor of psychology at Princeton University put it best:
Most of what I try fails, but these failures are often invisible, while the successes are visible. I have noticed that this sometimes gives others the impression that most things work out for me. As a result, they are more likely to attribute their own failures to themselves, rather than the fact that the world is stochastic, applications are crapshoots, and selection committees and referees have bad days.
In realizing this, and inspired by Melanie Stefan, Haushofer decided to publish his own CV of failures, in “an attempt to balance the record and provide some perspective”.
When we look at the CVs or resumes of successful people, we often see many successes that we don’t have. It is a good idea then to put things into perspective, by thinking about what we don’t see when look at successful people.
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Written on July 19th, 2016 by Paul Le