“When you fail, it's so easy to let it spiral into this judgment about you and your work and your value as a human. Sometimes we need to step back and recognize there are things beyond our control.”
If there’s anyone qualified to talk about failure, it’s a Kafka scholar. That might be why Kata Gellen, associate professor of German Studies, is able to talk about her own failures with ease.
One of her failures came in a particularly bitter flavor, though: rejection.
After finishing a manuscript for her new book, she sent it to academic presses to see if they’d be interested in publishing it. “I sent it to three presses that I thought would be longshots, and one that I thought would be a shoo-in,” Gellen said.
She explained that she had talked to an editor at the “shoo-in” press. The editor expressed interest, so she rushed to finish the manuscript and send it off. They never got back to her, even after she followed up.
“I realized that sometimes opportunities can also create roadblocks in certain ways,” said Gellen. “I was rushing the publication process, so I was sending out proposals a little prematurely, and I might have burned that bridge because of it.”
After sitting with the failure, Gellen realized the truth: the manuscript she’d sent out wasn’t the best it could be.
“In the end, it strengthened the project,” she said. “Because of that and some other feedback, I went back in and completely re-wrote the introduction, and it turned out much stronger.”
She said that at the time, even as a professor with tenure, it felt like the end of the world. But when she looks back now, it was a learning experience.
“When you fail, it's so easy to let it spiral into this judgment about you and your work and your value as a human,” said Gellen. "Sometimes we need to step back and recognize there are things beyond our control.”
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