For this week's blog post, let's talk about failure. One issue highlighted in Cao & Ngetich (2023) is that it's easy for those in graduate school or academia to look at other people's successes and assume that they don't have any failures, or that they themselves are more prone to failure in others. Of course, much like social media, we see the highlight reels of others while being more aware of our own struggles, which makes it important to be open about what you're going through. The authors frame their stories as a "CV of failures," and I'm going to talk a bit about some of my own failures, separated into several overarching themes. As just airing out my own perceived shortcomings isn't much by itself, I'll also discuss some of the things I've learned from failure.
1. Math
While this is not a unique position for one in the American education system, for much of grades K-12 I was terrible at math and truly detested the subject. By the time I was in my sophomore year of high school, several failed tests and mediocre passing grades has convinced me that I just wasn't a "math person" and I more or less stopped my math education at Algebra 2, opting to take statistics instead of the precalculus-calculus track that was the path of the more high-achieving students in my school. I was convinced I was never going to need math, that I had failed at understanding it, and that I wasn't any good at it anyway, so why bother? Well, that changed by the end of high school. I had started to get interested in astronomy and planetary science, and quickly realized that if I wanted to at least understand more (or think about a science field as a college major), I needed to understand math better than I did. So upon starting a geology major, I signed up for precalculus math at the start of my sophomore year, a good few years after most people I knew took precalculus. Part of me felt kinda stupid, or that I was a failure for starting so late, but I just stopped listening to that part of me. I did pretty well in that class, and after taking Calculus I, things started to make more sense! After feeling like I finally was starting to actually "get" math, I went on to take a few more courses, eventually getting an "A" in differential equations, which would have been unthinkable to me in high school.
I'm starting with this anecdote because I think that your mindset can follow you throughout much of your life, and I was convinced that I was a failure at math by the end of high school. In reality, I think I just didn't have great motivation (which getting interested in planetary science helped with) and I didn't learn math in the way that made the most sense to my brain. Calculus I to me seemed much more easy to understand than the geometry class I took my freshman year of high school. My takeaway is that some failures are mostly about incorrect prior assumptions (such as not being "good" at math, or thinking that there's no way you'd be better at math) that remain uncorrected.
2. Internship rejections
From 2015 all the way through 2020, I got rejected from dozens of internships. While I've been lucky to get a couple offers over the years, there were application cycles where I didn't get any. The first one I applied to was a National Air & Space Museum internship in early 2015, and it might've been the only one I applied to that cycle. I didn't get it, but hindsight showed that this was probably because I only applied to one internship, whereas most other successful applicants I've heard of have talked about applying to numerous internships. In thinking about this, I came to a realization that there are some failures that I'd classify as a failure because I didn't try as hard as I could (like in the previous example), or didn't act in the way that I should, but then there are other failures that are due more to being unlucky. For the most part, I feel like rejected internship applications fall more in the second category, along with a lot of grad school applications. Quite a few times on Twitter I've seen posts lamenting not getting into grad schools for planetary science, with some commenting that they're thinking of giving up on getting a graduate degree entirely. I think this is one area where it's sad because I think people are much more likely to talk about their successful applications than unsuccessful ones, and it creates the impression that if you're just facing down rejection after rejection you're in the minority and everyone else is getting internship and grad school offers.
One other thing I've learned from unsuccessful internship applications is how to develop a better application. In 2017 I applied to a few National Park Service internships, focusing on astronomy outreach and education. I got an interview for one position, but no successes beyond that. I next applied at the end of my Master's program, and was more successful, likely due to having a better sense of what questions would be asked in the interview and what skills I should focus on.
3. Research woes
My undergraduate geology department required every major to undertake a senior research thesis, and with an interest in the Galilean moons, I wanted to start a project focusing on the surface geology of Europa. After many hours diving into the literature, I settled on the question of how the geometry of strike-slip faults changed by latitude. No one in my school's geology department had much to do with planetary research, so I had my structural geology professor sign off on my topic and leave me to do everything else. Having this freedom to direct my own research was nice, and when I wasn't working my summer job from June to August of 2015 I'd be in the local library, downloading Galileo SSI images and mapping faults using Photoshop. After emailing a planetary researcher about methods towards the end of the summer, I realized that ArcMap is a much better platform to map faults and extract information from the data. Upon getting back to campus, I was able to use my department's ArcGIS license to begin my project anew. I consider this a failure because it effectively meant throwing away all the work in mapping faults I had done over the summer and having to start all over. It did teach me a few things, however. Chiefly, that taking time to really dig into what methods suit your research best is very important.
4. Job rejections
While I was still in my Master's program, I started to apply to positions that made use of the skills that I'd built up throughout my program, such as remote sensing and GIS. For the better part of the next 2+ years, I applied to similar positions, as well as positions in outreach, education, and teaching, with the goal of finding a long-term position that I could work in for at least a few years. While I had dozens of applications and several promising interviews, I didn't end up getting offers for any positions, having to work instead in shorter-term teaching and food service jobs less relevant to my skill set I'd developed in grad school. This was tough because I would've liked to find any suitable positions in remote sensing and GIS, two skills that I'd had years of experience at that point, but conversely I think I learned a lot from working in less "academic" positions. As has happened with rejections from grad programs and internships, what's important is that it is very much *not* the end of the world if you don't get into a program that you'd like to get into. As long as you have some way to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head, you're doing pretty good. This kind of ties in with the lesson of perspective: yes, we're all here because we're driven by our passion for planetary science and want to get into certain grad programs, get certain fellowships and awards, but at the end of the day having a job that lets you pay the bills and provides stability is the most important thing. Sometimes failures can feel less like failures and more like readjustments that give you perspective that you wouldn't have had otherwise.