Ted Audio Collective

When I was just starting my career, I knew that to one day get tenure, I had to be productive.

Publish or perish.

So early in grad school, I started submitting research papers to top journals.

The first one got rejected.

So did the second.

Experts in my own field were telling me that my work was not good enough.

I wondered if I should drop out.

I'd been working on a third paper, so I decided to give it one more shot.

I spent months perfecting it, got feedback from more than a dozen leading thinkers, and

shipped it to our premier journal.

But that one got rejected too.

I emailed the editor and asked if I could have another chance.

He said no.

That afternoon, an advisor told me to put it away in a drawer for six months, and come

back to it once the pain had faded.

I was a Paul Biden idea.

I didn't want to be the kind of person who couldn't face rejection.

So I did the opposite.

I spent the next three days at my desk, in my pajamas, subsisting on Robin Noodles and

take out.

I rewrote the paper and sent it back in.

...