As I sit to re-write a rejected application for a fellowship, I look back at my early, scribbled reflection when I received the news.
“Wow! I feel utterly spent, gutted and bleak. I recognise some of these feelings from when I was getting divorced. So why? This is just a grant? This is part of my job? Why?
There is something much more personal about a fellowship. YOU are judged rather than a team of applicants for a project grant. Maybe it’s something about your ideas being rejected? My identity as an expert being questioned?
[Reflecting in the interview] Did I deride the interviewer’s wrong assumption? Did they not take kindly to me implying that what they questioned was obvious? Should I have been more humble? Do I fight or play the game? Does my confidence annoy others?
[Reflecting on the good reviews] There are a lot of feelings about apparently being close. A sense of injustice and anger. Would it have been better for me not to have seen the very good reviewer scores? No, because the sense of anger and injustice has given me the energy to do this and not give up.
[As I emerge] At least now I am at a stage where I can start to be creative again.“
Three-months on, the self-doubt hits from the page as I read this back. Not so much doubt in the work I have proposed but in how I, in all I represent, navigate these spaces.
Yes, there were cracks and clear room for improvement in my proposal that I have been working on. My problem solving instincts have actually relished responding to the feedback and coming with solutions.
My doubts have turned inwards on how I fit into senior academic spaces. How do I convince others that my ideas, expertise and drive are worth backing? In preparing for the panel interview, I emulated other research leaders around me: calm professionalism, confidence, self-belief. My heart was beating out of my chest and my nerve was close to crumbling, so I used these affectations I had seen in others as a shield. I prepared, and prepared, and prepared, and prepared. My instinct straight afterwards was that I had been put in my place by some on the panel.
On receiving my rejection, I looked inwards. I have recently started an excellent leadership course at my trust. I shared with the group my doubts about how I come across to people. I also shared this feeling with my line manager during my appraisal. Do I rub people up the wrong way? Do I come across as “cocky”? Can I be too blunt? Or are people who look like me, from my professional and social background not expected to act a certain way?
I can only guess at extrinsic factors as I wrestle with the intrinsic that I can control. My parents shared their experience that to succeed in the UK, I have to work 10 times as hard as my peers. I am grateful to the opportunities I have here, but I see their advice is sage. I, and others like me, can never take our foot off the pedal. The work is on the proposals and ideas we present, but also how we show ourselves in spaces where there are vanishingly few like me. If I can keep turning up and presenting myself, maybe it will become more normalised? Others can then show up with me. And succeed.
“…Does my haughtiness offend you?
Maya angelou: Still I rise
Don’t you take it awful hard,
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard…”
Dr Gita Ramdharry 