Rejections are not an end of the world, they're just the beginning of a new one

Rejection in any terms is nothing but dismissal of your humble application. Be it a research paper or an admission application, in personal life or professional life, rejection of any kind hurts. According to a survey, rejection usually follows with an invalid reason that could have been taken care of. For example, getting rejected for a PhD application due to insufficient funding with the university or the department, being rejected due to less standardized test scores or having one or two certificates or a few months less experience than the competitors. To elaborate on how these reasons could have been taken care of, imagine adjusting funds to accept that one PhD student’s admit, imagine considering her/his extraordinary research capabilities instead of being judgemental and rejecting on the basis of standardized score, imagine not giving a student admit because of comparatively lesser work experience; everybody is a fresher before he is a pro at it. Without giving chances, nobody can possibly learn, achieve or excel at anything. Everybody deserves a chance. Everybody appreciates popular people but often forget to look beyond reality and search for the ones dealing though rejections despite their talents and capabilities. How many scientists and their research work do you know that the world has not witnessed, acknowledged often than they deserved or that it took long for the world to accept these rejected scientists and their work ? Roughly about a hundred scientists ! (These are just the ones who are recorded in history. Now imagine the ones who the world will never know just due to rejections!) The objective of this article is to make everyone realize that not every rejection means you will be forgotten forever, not every rejection means you are flawed, not every rejection means that you can’t flourish on your own !

Let’s focus on the concept behind these articles with examples. To begin with it, let’s take an example that everyone can related now in the time of a global pandemic – washing hands often as one of the prevention against coronavirus :

1) Rejection followed by global acceptance :

Ignaz Semmelweis was an Austrian obstetrician whose theory of washing hands often to save lives was not considered seriously by doctors. He noticed that healthy women in the birthing ward too, died despite their good health. The increasing mortality rates only in the birthing ward was something that bothered Dr. Semmelweis first. On conducting research for days, he figured out that the women who died after delivering babies were treated by doctors who used to work in the mortuary with dead bodies. It was 1847 and due to insufficient knowledge about germs and appropriate sanitation techniques, he could not effectively explain his theory and doctors rejected his theory that washing hands can save lives. But he did not allow this reason to hold him back from following hand washing techniques to save lives, he instructed every doctor in his hospital and made it mandatory to practice hand washing often, especially before delivering babies; but one day, his mental state was questioned and he was sent to an asylum. Following his departure to the asylum, doctors gave his theory a thought and practiced hand washing often, especially before delivering babies and to their surprise, the mortality rates decreased significantly. This hand washing, often to save lives, slowly spread across hospitals, countries, continents and now we are practicing hand washing to avoid being infected by viruses and bacteria.

Concluding this story, I would like to prove that rejection at first can be hurtful and you will be made fun of, your mental state will be questioned; but a day comes when you and your work is accepted globally. How to make it work is all in your hands.

2) Being called the Father of Modern genetics after rejection :

Everybody knows Johann Gregor Mendel - the father of modern genetics, but nobody knows the way his law of inheritance was first doubted and rejected. Mendel was a hawkeyed scientist who was the first person to correctly identify the rules of heredity which determine how traits are passed through generations of living things. Before being accepted, Mendel's mathematical ratio of inheritance was not understood by many botanists. Subsequent mentions of Mendel's results usually focused on the hybrids that Mendel made, ignoring the mathematics altogether. The importance of Mendel’s work was only properly appreciated in 1900, 16 years after his death, and 34 years after he first published it. Concluding, the story of Mendel's law rejection proves that rejections don’t always mean your theory/belief is incorrect, probably people who reject it do not want to see exact things and a lot of factors overshadow your virtue by their lack of understanding.

3) Rejections can win nobel prize too :

PCR – polymerase chain reaction, the method to amplify DNA strand easily was a molecular biology technique invented by Scientist Kary Mullis. Kary Mullis was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his invention. A molecular biology technique that is abundantly used in labs across the world to amplify DNA strand was first rejected by Nature and then Science journal. The editors of the journals rejected this invention saying it would not be suitable to meet the needs of their readers. Can you imagine ? Being rejected by assumptions of not being able to research something that would ‘suit’ the readers ! This vague reason did not stop Kary Mullis to tell the world that he had invented something that would bring ground breaking research into academia. He tried again and submitted his paper to Oxford academic journals and his paper was accepted, published and followed by the entire world. Concluding, this proves that rejections don’t mean your research is not significant, it means your work is as important as you think of it to be and that it can win a Nobel prize too. All you need is to believe in yourself and a second chance.

4) Rejections followed by recognition when the world needs you :

Coronavirus – the virus that is known to have originated in Wuhan, China, was first identified by Scientist June Almeida in 1960. Nasal washing from volunteers in Surrey were associated with few common cold viruses but could not be grown in routine cell cultures. These nasal samples were first seen by June Almeida who saw the coronavirus particles in the specimens, which she described as 'like influenza viruses but not exactly the same'. She conducted research on these viruses and submitted a paper to a peer reviewed journal who rejected her paper because the referees said the images she produced were just bad pictures of influenza virus particles. However, the new discovery from strain B814 was submitted in the British Medical Journal in 1965 and the first photographs of what June Almeida had seen were published in the Journal of General Virology in 1967. The work she conducted on identifying coronavirus is now being recognized when the world needs it to be studied. 13 years after her death, today she is finally getting recognition that she deserves as a pioneer whose work speeded up understanding of the virus that is currently spreading throughout the world. In Conclusion, this story proves that rejections don’t mean that your work is not up to the mark, but that it can be recognized when the world needs it the most.

Now that I have implied that rejections don’t always mean that you or your work is flawed and that it can win some day, just imagine the number of scientists and their works that were never recorded in history due to rejections supported by invalid reasons. Although the objective of my article is that rejections are not bad and that you can flourish on your own, don’t you think rejections in academia are affecting individuals in STEM to stand ahead in the line of conducting groundbreaking research and are being disqualified on the basis of invalid reasons that could be taken care of ? I believe yes, there are many individuals among us who can relate to this. Despite so much freedom to express thoughts in today’s modern world, where is the freedom of opposing inequality in academia ? Where are the rights that everyone should get equally ? What is wrong with administrators focusing on standardized test scores to compare people based on their academic performance but not their actual research acumen ? What is wrong with universities rejecting due to insufficient funding instead of adjusting the funds and giving equal opportunity to all the deserving applicants ? Although rejections don’t make you flawed or give anyone a right to call you defective and make fun of the rejection you’ve received, don’t rejections kill ideas and overshadow talent because of anything else ?

With all due respect, my article is simply an expression of how rejections overshadow talent and affect academia. My article does not mean to offend any individual but just to make all realize that rejections can affect science and that rejections are not always a denotation of your flaws, but instead a sign that you are worthy too, all you need is a second chance.

Believe in your capabilities; because rejections are not an end of the world, they're just the beginning of one !

- Rachna Jadhav

@theresilientresearcher