Rejected

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Personal Stuff

Because I’m a person

My wife and I are doing a bit (well, a lot) of spring cleaning, so we’re going through a pile of stuff in our house, tidying up and generally getting rid of things we don’t need any more (mostly by donating them to various helpful organizations in our area).

In the attic she found a bin filled with old papers of mine: newspaper clippings from interviews or book reviews, notes I made for my first book and research journal papers I printed out while researching my second, old letters from friends, and letters to and from my wife while we were dating, and the like.

One item stuck out a bit due to its size. Stuffed into a manila envelope was a stack of official letters rubber banded together, and I knew immediately what they were despite not having seen them in probably 20 years.

They were rejection letters.

In 1994 I was finishing up my PhD work at the University of Virginia, so I started sending out applications for postdoc positions at a bunch of different places doing astronomical research. Mostly universities, but some were at labs or research institutes.

True story: Every single one I heard back from rejected me. That kinda sucked. They all had their reasons, legit ones — most said there was a surplus of applicants for the few positions available, which really was a big issue in astronomy around that time… or, honestly, maybe my work and application simply weren’t up to snuff — and while that may have reduced the sting a little it didn’t help my situation.

One place I applied to in person didn’t get back to me, and it was pretty much the only place left that hadn’t said no (to be fair, one person did offer me a postdoc spot but the funding was only for six months, so I’d immediately have to start applying for grants as soon as I hit the ground there; that wasn’t ideal to say the least, so I held that one as a backup in case this last place said no as well).

I remember sitting in my small office that I shared with two other grad students, and finally getting the courage to call back the last holdout. I was nervous and more than a little pessimistic. It had been months since my interview so I wasn’t expecting much.

When I got a hold of the scientist there in charge of hiring for the team, the conversation was… weird. I asked if there was any news about the position. She immediately started talking about their procedures for bringing people in: Forms to fill out, dates, training sessions to attend.

“Wait wait wait,” I said. “Back up, please.” I was confused, as if I had walked in on the middle of a movie. I was almost afraid to ask, but at that point it had to be asked: “Am I hired?”

A moment’s pause ensued. “Well, yes,” she said, as if I were a bit thick. Then, more tentatively: “Didn’t you get that phone call?”

A warm wave washed over me. “Um, no. I didn’t. But if you say so, then I’ll take it.”

And that’s how I got my first job out of graduate school.

It wound up being a nightmare, but that’s a tale for another time. Happily it didn’t last long and I was able to find a much more stable and rewarding job a few months later working on a new camera that was being built to go on board Hubble Space Telescope. I’ve written about that part of my life elsewhere, if you’re interested.

Back in the here and now, finding all those rejection letters buried under multiple layers of personal history in the attic was, I’ll admit, fun. Or, at least, sardonically captivating. If you care to find some sort of morality lesson or philosophical motivation from this tale, feel free to do so; my own is simple enough: If you have small statistical odds of success for any given effort, make a lot of efforts. A big number times a small fraction gets you closer to 1. Simple enough.

As for the letters themselves, I didn’t even smile triumphantly or hesitate at all to toss them unceremoniously in the recycling bin after taking that photo above. It’s been three decades, and that’s a chapter in my life long since relegated to dusty memory. The emotional distance of time makes them something less than a snarkily cherished memento, and there’re no stakes for me in keeping them. One less physical thing to keep track of.

The letters to and from my then-soon-to-be-wife, though… those I’m keeping. I still happen to like her, and those made me smile unapologetically and without reserve.

Some physical manifestations of memories aren’t life lessons. They’re just nice to have.

[Update (Monday March 27, 2023): After rereading this post the morning it went up I had some further thoughts, so I put them on Twitter. Click through to see the short thread.]

Et alia

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