CV of Failures: Princeton Professor Publishes Resume of His Career Lows (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Guardian report: A professor at Princeton University has published a CV listing his career failures (PDF), in an attempt to "balance the record" and encourage others to keep trying in the face of disappointment. Johannes Haushofer, who is an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at the university in New Jersey, posted his unusual CV on Twitter last week. The document contains sections titled Degree programs I did not get into , Research funding I did not get and Paper rejections from academic journals. Haushofer writes: Most of what I try fails, but these failures are often invisible, while the successes are visible. I have noticed that this sometimes gives others the impression that most things work out for me. As a result, they are more likely to attribute their own failures to themselves, rather than the fact that the world is stochastic, applications are crapshoots, and selection committees and referees have bad days. This CV of Failures is an attempt to balance the record and provide some perspective. He added another section called "Meta-Failures" to his resume, writing, "This darn CV of Failures has received way more attention than my entire body of academic work."

Comments

Re:Lots of industries/careers are unbalanaced

[Kjella]

I can respect what this professor is saying. However, there are plenty of industries/careers/endeavors that have it far worse. Take safety, for example. You can have thousands of successes, but then everything goes in smoke after an failure or two.

Uh, that would be the opposite where your failures are very visible. He's describing how all the successes are on the CV and the failures aren't, so people think life's been a winning streak. He's showing the list to say I've had my failures, you'll have your failures too and that's totally normal so don't fret about it. At least ordinary people in ordinary careers shouldn't, if people die when you fail maybe you should take it rather seriously.