CV of failures

December 10, 2010 at 12:34 pm | | postdoc life, science community, scientific integrity

Nature Jobs has encouraged folks to spread the word of their failures, as well as their successes. So I made a CV of my failures. I’m probably forgetting a lot of failures, but I’m not really motivated to spend a lot of time trying to remember. Anyone else want to air their dirty laundry?

6 Comments »

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  1. This is a pretty cool idea, Sam. Thanks.

    Comment by Chemjobber — December 10, 2010 #

  2. Neat thing to keep track of, but I can see the academic aspiration of excellence apparent in the footnotes. Really, you already listed a link to your actual CV. And if part of your reason of compiling this is because of Nature article, then “I pulled out my application” isn’t going to make anyone else feel better or teach other students any lessons. I think that would make a stronger point.

    Comment by LK — December 10, 2010 #

  3. I was actually planning on putting a section in my thesis of all the experiments I tried and didn’t work.

    Comment by Kendall — December 11, 2010 #

  4. Yeah, the footnotes need to go. Thanks, LK.

    Kendall, I love that idea!

    Comment by sam — December 11, 2010 #

  5. I haven’t even started studying in the University, but this is showing me that perhaps I should get used to some failures too.

    Maybe the shock we’ll be more soft.

    Thanks, anyway.

    Comment by Nuno — December 12, 2010 #

  6. great post sam. i need to work on my own failure CV (which is quite impressive i might brag). actually i remember when i was rejected as a harvard junior fellow (was the 1st alternate . . . oh so close) and I came back to grad school. I was discussing with a professor at Stanford who was also rejected by the same program (won’t name names) and after sharing my story I told him “the number of great scientists that have been rejected by these programs is far larger than the number that have been accepted.”

    Comment by neal — January 12, 2011 #

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