CV of Failures: Princeton Professor Publishes Resume of His Career Lows (theguardian.com) 51
An anonymous reader shares a Guardian report: A professor at Princeton University has published a CV listing his career failures (PDF), in an attempt to "balance the record" and encourage others to keep trying in the face of disappointment. Johannes Haushofer, who is an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at the university in New Jersey, posted his unusual CV on Twitter last week. The document contains sections titled Degree programs I did not get into , Research funding I did not get and Paper rejections from academic journals. Haushofer writes: 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. This CV of Failures is an attempt to balance the record and provide some perspective. He added another section called "Meta-Failures" to his resume, writing, "This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention than my entire body of academic work."
I like it (Score:5, Interesting)
I like it!
It is an interesting thing that successes get more memory than failure, and hence you get an inaccurate impression of successful people just moving from one success to another. Remarking on the failures would give a somewhat more balanced view.
Re:I like it (Score:4, Interesting)
Key point: (Score:5, Funny)
"This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention than my entire body of academic work"
Dale Carnegie (Score:2)
Lots of industries/careers are unbalanaced (Score:5, Interesting)
I can respect what this professor is saying. However, there are plenty of industries/careers/endeavors that have it far worse.
Take safety, for example. You can have thousands of successes, but then everything goes in smoke after an failure or two. The recent happenings with Dole and Blue Bell ice cream are good examples. Same for law enforcement. You can have a department that employs hundreds or thousands of officers who daily have positive interactions with the community and uphold the law. Then one or two officers do something stupid or malicious and all of it is called into question. There are so many ongoing examples of this that I don't think I even need to bring any up (being that nearly all are very racially charged and that isn't the point here). Military/Intelligence is the same thing as well. Foil 1000 terrorist plots and the public will never know. Let one slip through and all of a sudden ... well you get the idea.
What the professor is describing is the human tendency to focus on the parts of things that we like. Ironically, the attention generated by his "failure CV" is a result of the fact that many of us understand the failing he is describing and can identify with it because we do the same thing and perhaps somewhat wish the world was a little different, more balanced.
Re:Lots of industries/careers are unbalanaced (Score:5, Insightful)
I can respect what this professor is saying. However, there are plenty of industries/careers/endeavors that have it far worse. Take safety, for example. You can have thousands of successes, but then everything goes in smoke after an failure or two.
Uh, that would be the opposite where your failures are very visible. He's describing how all the successes are on the CV and the failures aren't, so people think life's been a winning streak. He's showing the list to say I've had my failures, you'll have your failures too and that's totally normal so don't fret about it. At least ordinary people in ordinary careers shouldn't, if people die when you fail maybe you should take it rather seriously.
Re: (Score:3)
Military/Intelligence is the same thing as well. Foil 1000 terrorist plots and the public will never know. Let one slip through and all of a sudden ... well you get the idea.
Military and intelligence funding is very political. If they had foiled even one terrorist plot they would never let us forget about it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll lose a couple mod points to say this, but it is worth it.
The military/intelligence community works in a world of top secret information. They are NOT allowed to talk about their successes. This is also why the NSA didn't respond to much of the Snowden stuff, even to correct the massive mistakes they made, it is all still classified even if some of it was released.
The military and intelligence agencies not talking about the people they have stopped has nothing to do with a lack of people being stopped
Re: (Score:2)
I'll lose a couple mod points to say this, but it is worth it.
The military/intelligence community works in a world of top secret information. They are NOT allowed to talk about their successes. This is also why the NSA didn't respond to much of the Snowden stuff, even to correct the massive mistakes they made, it is all still classified even if some of it was released.
The military and intelligence agencies not talking about the people they have stopped has nothing to do with a lack of people being stopped, you just won't hear about any of the successes for 50 years because they are all classified as the ways in which they were stopped are highly sensitive.
Oohh so you're going to claim there are no politics involved? That some politician won't leak the info because it benefits his/her campaign somehow? That some C level exec at the CIA or NSA won't let it slip? They are appointed people. But you're right. We all know that the Director of the CIA [wikipedia.org] won't open his big fat mouth just to get a little something on the side. They keep everything under wraps and never have any scandals [wikipedia.org] because they keep all their foibles under wraps, too.
Re: (Score:2)
When the alternative is federal prison, yeah, that is my assertion.
Leaking Top Secret information gets you in federal prison. It doesn't matter if it makes you look good.
Petraeus is the exception to this rule, I am not sure how he avoided federal prison, but just look at history for the many examples of people going to federal prison despite having good intentions.
Re: (Score:2)
When the alternative is federal prison, yeah, that is my assertion.
Leaking Top Secret information gets you in federal prison. It doesn't matter if it makes you look good.
Petraeus is the exception to this rule, I am not sure how he avoided federal prison, but just look at history for the many examples of people going to federal prison despite having good intentions.
Correction. It would land you or me in jail. Otherwise Hillary Clinton would already be indicted for violating rules just as Petraeus should have been.
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe Carly will be inspired to balance the record too, by publishing her successes.
lack of transparency (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand learning from career lows, but it sure seems like failure often isn't related to the strength of a paper or a proposal.
In my field, it seems like a lot of positions are written for individual people. They really don't have an intention of hiring the best person. That really bugs me because there's supposed to be transparency and fairness I'm the process.
I've seen it too often with proposal and journal reviews, too. I've seen what appears to be conflicts of interest with manuscript reviews. You can tell who is reviewing your paper many times because of what they ask you to cite. I'm pretty sure I've had reviewers hold up manuscripts of mine so their stuff would get published first.
It really seems like if you're not part of certain circles, you'll have a hard time in academia and research regardless of the quality of your work.
Sometimes there a lot to learn from failure. But so often, it's also political. And that's a shame.
Re: (Score:2)
In my field, it seems like a lot of positions are written for individual people. They really don't have an intention of hiring the best person. That really bugs me because there's supposed to be transparency and fairness I'm the process.
Sound like the Microsoft hiring process. A manager wants to hire his beer buddy for job. HR requires five candidates interviewed before the beer buddy gets the job. So four other applicants are interviewed along with the beer buddy. And then the beer buddy gets the job. Five Microsoft recruiter strung me along like that for a month in 2005. I got so ticked off by the process that I held my last phone interview inside the men restroom during the lunch hour rush at my then current job. All the pissing and flu
Re: (Score:3)
but it sure seems like failure often isn't related to the strength of a paper or a proposal.
Yep!
There is a relation, but it's incredibly weak. I mean if you write the paper in crayon and misspell everything it will never get in. Beyond that however, it's more than a bit random. It also strongly depends on who is on the various panels and whether they like to push their own field, whether they dislike you etc etc.
One fun thing you get in some of the ruder rejections is a non-native speaker adopting a superi
Unfortunately connections matter (Score:2)
"CV of failures" (Score:4, Informative)
It's called a "shadow CV". Haushofer is hardly the first to post one.
For example, from 2012:
https://dynamicecology.wordpre... [wordpress.com]
Re:"CV of failures" (Score:5, Informative)
It's called a "shadow CV". Haushofer is hardly the first to post one.
For example, from 2012:
https://dynamicecology.wordpre... [wordpress.com]
That is prominently noted in the second paragraph of Haushofer's CV. He cites a 2010 Nature paper [nature.com] by Melanie I. Stefan as a source of inspiration and provides 4 examples of similar works (see the CV for that - I'm not doing all your work for you - LOL).
Re: (Score:2)
He was the first person to post a shadow CV that lead to this discussion thread today. Isn't that good enough?
Perhaps there's an interesting spin-off of Groundhog Day, a world in which it is impossible for anything that's ever happened before to be repeated ever again. In that world, "First post!" would be regarded as a truly special and unique accomplishment, as one would expect in a world where the average human never manages to do a single exemplary thing in the
Re: (Score:1)
I think he just added another one to the list...
Re: (Score:2)
You know like me making that mistake of having depression in college which meant I did poorly. Years later I had the stupid idea that maybe if I kick ass in premed that I could get into med school. Yup, the fact I had a 3.95 in premed course work (Lowest grade was a B+ in English. Yes I took calc based physics, I wanted a challenge.) and a 33 on my MCAT (lowest score was a 10 in verbal) didn't get around the fact my 10+ year old undergrad grades were low. (I was stupid to believe that lady from admissions at the near by medical school when she told us they tended to focus on the more recent stuff.)
Yes, this is why people don't want to show any failure.
So how many times did you try for med school again? This is called "making excuses".
Michael Jordan on failure (Score:1)
I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Potty training (Score:5, Funny)
He's a psychology professor. He should make a CV of his parents' failings.
Maybe not an entirely altruistic publication. (Score:2)
Seems a clever ploy to highlight his efforts and thereby enhance his career prospects.
The good professor is ranked as an 'assistant professor', which is a non tenured position.
To make tenure, he needs to get promoted to 'associate professor', which is the first tenured career step.
There are very many more assistants than associates, the competition is brutal and getting some recognition is essential.
Good on him for finding an encouraging way to document the rejections he has endured.
You have tenure you can pull off stints like that (Score:2)
In a professional environment mentioning failures is considered a bad tone, left for the performance evaluation review or equivalent meeting.
There is a more appropriate and more relevant word, called experience.
Most of us with a lot of success, we also have many many failures. We know better than anyone most of our failures, and we are extra careful when doing our work.
Of course (Score:2)
This means a lot less if he has tenure, right?
It helps reducing expectations (Score:2)
When you notice that your career is poor, and that everyone else is having success while you are stagnant, sometimes it is a problem of over-inflated expectations and false perception of other people's success. There is a very, very nice discussion about the frustration of people based on their career in this post [waitbutwhy.com]. Presenting a list of both successes and failures helps other people ignore the idealized view of your career, and avoid frustration.
Thank you!
Mandatory Tetris quote (Score:2)
"If there is something Tetris taught me, it is that failures pile up when successes disappear"...
Could someone remember me where I saw this first?