Dear Reviewers
Published:
This really wasn’t the title I had in my mind for my first blog post, while, with great enthusiasm, writing my first Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF) proposal. At all.
I was full of ideas at the time, how I will create a sort of knowledge-base in a web-page dedicated to my project, GLORIA, and will post about technology, biology and all the other knowledge I will gather during the project. Amidst the excitement -ideas of the first few posts I will publish had already been forming in my mind-, I somehow forget one tiny little vital detail: to check whether the domain name I suggested in the proposal is available or not. Which actually was not and I was happily unaware of this fact. But again, that was only a tiny tiny vital detail that was outshined by the whole process of proposing the science I was excited about and all the future possibilities.
The reality sank in the night, right after I submitted the proposal with a strong sense of accomplishment and rushed to write that first post that will detail my own process of writing a MSCA-IF proposal. Only that, I won’t be able to because the domain wasn’t available. This mistake, which was a tiny detail a few hours ago, turned into a some kind of beacon then. It towered over the entirety of the proposal, overshadowing the feeling of satisfaction, all the effort I have been putting into thinking and writing, and the valuable times of my advisor, colleagues and all the other people I made connections during this process to make the proposal better. Although a small mistake, which was not even related to science that is proposed, I felt betrayed by myself and I was saddened by the possibility of this mistake decreasing the overall value of the proposal.
As I almost reduced the whole proposal into this mistake, I decided to share it with my advisor and colleagues with a slight sense of embarrassment and sadness. Well, in the end, we just acknowledged it as a mistake, and even made a laugh out of it and then it felt so much lighter. This whole process, on the other hand, made me think about other scientists, how they handle mistakes in a world of glory. Then I came across Julia Strand’s cordial post, Scientists Make Mistakes. I Made a Big One. She bravely shared her story of discovering a mistake in her publication and the emotional turmoil she went through after that: a mixture of shock, embarrassment, guilt, and worry to the point of ‘feeling physically ill’. I loved how she whole-heartedly accepted it as it is: a mistake and shared this with the world - despite the fear of oncoming failures that it could have triggered. I also found out few other scientists, bravely sharing their CV of failures, which utterly surprised me in a good way.
image credit: @Elise Gravel
As a young PhD, I still have a long way to go and because this is science, we never know and learn enough - which is why we love what we do anyway. The point is that the road is endless and I felt incredibly lucky for the people I had worked with in the past and have been working with, my inner circle with their encouragements and the outer world of scientists I haven’t met personally, but being touched by their openness and honesty about themselves and the science they did with love. The people humble enough to share their failures to encourage young people. And who says, it is only young people who need encouragement? We all do, regardless of our ages, our positions in our jobs, no matter the achievements, because each and every moment the courage we took to do something new, despite the fear of failure and the possibility of mistakes that we might make on the way, is something to be celebrated. Because the courage to own our mistakes, however small or big they are, is something to be cherished. Whether this is our jobs, relationships or tiny household chores. Those cookies we failed to bake yesterday, waiting for us to acknowledge what we did wrong and then learn from them, so that the next batch turns out brilliant.
Well, this is the story of how this first post came around, albeit much later than I expected. And the title, a classical phrase which we all know by heart through many rebuttal letters, is dedicated to the prospective reviewers of the MSCA-IF panel who are curious about the existence of my personal webpage after seeing the gloomy ‘404’ message on the promised web page of GLORIA! :)
On this final note, let the upcoming year be the one we overcome all our challenges with the strength of what we learned from past mistakes. Cheers!