Why I post my CV of Failures
A while back, I wished on Twitter that I could see a CV of the things that people tried to do and failed because I felt so intimidated looking at peoples’ CVs. Some of my favorite academics in the Twitterverse let me know that, in fact, some people do post their failure CVs, and Nature even published a brief article on the subject in 2010. I was thrilled, and set to work on my own right away. I try to spread the gospel of the mortuus finem vitae (a term I am trying to coin - thanks, Google Translate - meaning “dead ends of one’s life”) everywhere I go. But some of the responses I’ve gotten are:
Wow, you’re really self-punishing. Don’t you just want to move on?
You’re too junior to do this. Aren’t you afraid people that are looking for your CV are going to look at it?
To the first point, this doesn’t feel like a self-flagellation exercise to me at all. It helped me reflect on how important it is to try a lot of things and to keep trying if it didn’t work the first time. I didn’t get into my graduate school (part 2) alma mater the first time I applied. I applied to Cuba One Foundation trips multiple times before being accepted this year. Even certain friends who I think are insanely productive and successful have very long lists of paper and grant rejections. Few things in life are one-shot games. The failure CV was a great reminder of the power of persistence.
And to the second point, that may be true, but I don’t think that keeping these failures private will be the difference between making or breaking my career. If it does, that is messed up because every academic is playing this numbers game. Once you meet a certain quality standard, the difference between success and failure is a crapshoot, so trying to do a lot of things and hoping that at least some of them work out is the only way forward.
In the words of my friend Kevin: “This is a fundamentally important thing that we should be more open about, because it helps us combat society's complete embrace of the survivorship bias. Our CVs are designed to make us look like a version of ourselves that we really aren't.”
So I add my mortuus finem vitae to the great existing examples here, here, and here. Let me know if you post an MFV and I’ll link to yours too. But if you’re thinking about hiring me, can I direct your attention here?