PhD funding is weird. One of the few things I see discussed here is that it is as much a game of luck as it is anything else. You might get rejected purely because they've already given awards to, say, three other projects like yours. Remember this: it is not personal, it doesn't
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reflect badly on you or your research. Rejections may come about even if you have very high grades and a perfectly outlined project. I'm compelled to write this as I had very low self esteem for year 1 of my PhD, and I want to reassure anyone who might feel now as I felt then.
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All but a handful of my colleagues received a particular funding award. Without the different award I DID get, I would not be here, and I'm incredibly grateful for it. However, I was constantly comparing myself to them and feeling I came up short. It was not great. In time,
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I got into my research, got excited about it, and found my own sense of self worth. It took a long time. I also spent time with people who I actually liked spending time with, rather than trying to fit myself in to a 'cohort'.
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Around the time of my first funding rejection, before I found out about winning another award, I had a reassuring chat with
@jembloomfield. He called my first rejection a 'baptism of fire' and welcomed me to 'the fold'. He said it was useful to deal with rejection early becauseShow this thread -
academia is so competitive, rejection is something that happens a lot. So this very early experience, difficult as it was, helped prepare me for later, and gave me no illusions as to the nature of the career I was getting into.
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Funding, and PhD study, reflects the larger culture of academia: it's extremely competitive, and gruelling and unrewarding if you tie your self worth to it. You, as a person, as a researcher, as a member of the community, are valid. Determine your worth on your own terms.
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I can ALSO reassure you that someone, somewhere, in the weird little niche that you work in, will find your project fascinating and exciting and will *get* it. It is these moments of connection that helped me in the longer run, too.
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Thank you for writing this. I didn’t get funding for my PhD (I’m still self-funding) so I totally relate.
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Also it doesn't help that said funding body proactively tries to foster clear demarcations between award recipients and "others" linguistically and by using different admin systems etc.
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