Failures and Lowlights
Inspired by Rae Langton, and because I'm aware that it's helpful and encouraging for people on the academic job market to know that established academics often have hidden CVs of failure, here's a brief account of the times that things have not gone swimmingly for me.
I did not attain the A-level grades required by my offer from Leeds, but thankfully they accepted me anyway (I had trouble motivating myself to study for my exams; decades later I was diagnosed with ADHD). After completing my BA and MA at Leeds, I had a DPhil place at Oxford, but couldn’t go because I didn’t get the funding I needed. I spent a year doing odd jobs around the Philosophy Department at Leeds and then was successful in getting funding to go to Cambridge, where I did my PhD. Having not paid sufficient attention to the terms of my funding, I ended up having to complete my PhD in only 2 years, which I managed, but the stress put me off academia for a while. As a result, I didn’t apply for any academic jobs following my PhD, and instead went to work in IT. I hated the corporate world and it hated me too. I spent 3.5 years there, thinking that I had probably ballsed up my whole life. During that time I applied unsuccessfully for many academic jobs, and spent my evenings and weekends (and, ok, countless conference calls too) working on philosophy publications. My IT career ended with a voluntary redundancy, which gave me enough money to spend a few months without working, though not intentionally - I was frantically applying for jobs and worrying about paying the bills. After many more academic job applications that went nowhere, I finally had some success: I got a research fellowship at the recently established Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. I stayed for just over 3 years and left near the end of my contract, when I was pregnant with my daughter, missing the qualifying date for maternity pay by 2 weeks (I am hugely grateful to the deliberately unnamed Oxford staff for tinkering with my contract to ensure I would qualify). I then spent a truly nightmarish 4 years during which I had my daughter followed 21 months later by my son (neither of those counts as nightmarish, of course), and turned out to be in an abusive relationship. There followed homelessness, moving between temporary accommodation, living in a relative's attic and eventually a council flat, being chased for debts and tax fraud that had been committed in my name but not by me, going to court to prevent my abuser having contact with my children, much emotional anguish, and probably PTSD (undiagnosed but strongly suspected). Whenever my children were sleeping I worked on philosophy publications and literally dozens of unsuccessful academic job applications, which eventually culminated in a successful one - another research post at the University of Oxford. I stayed in that post for around 18 months before moving to Royal Holloway. As a solo parent with a full-time job and a long commute, I don't get to travel much to conferences, and I don't attend many evening events - at least for a few years, after which I'm hoping to conscript a couple of free taxi drivers. Other than that, my life is relatively normal.
I did not attain the A-level grades required by my offer from Leeds, but thankfully they accepted me anyway (I had trouble motivating myself to study for my exams; decades later I was diagnosed with ADHD). After completing my BA and MA at Leeds, I had a DPhil place at Oxford, but couldn’t go because I didn’t get the funding I needed. I spent a year doing odd jobs around the Philosophy Department at Leeds and then was successful in getting funding to go to Cambridge, where I did my PhD. Having not paid sufficient attention to the terms of my funding, I ended up having to complete my PhD in only 2 years, which I managed, but the stress put me off academia for a while. As a result, I didn’t apply for any academic jobs following my PhD, and instead went to work in IT. I hated the corporate world and it hated me too. I spent 3.5 years there, thinking that I had probably ballsed up my whole life. During that time I applied unsuccessfully for many academic jobs, and spent my evenings and weekends (and, ok, countless conference calls too) working on philosophy publications. My IT career ended with a voluntary redundancy, which gave me enough money to spend a few months without working, though not intentionally - I was frantically applying for jobs and worrying about paying the bills. After many more academic job applications that went nowhere, I finally had some success: I got a research fellowship at the recently established Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. I stayed for just over 3 years and left near the end of my contract, when I was pregnant with my daughter, missing the qualifying date for maternity pay by 2 weeks (I am hugely grateful to the deliberately unnamed Oxford staff for tinkering with my contract to ensure I would qualify). I then spent a truly nightmarish 4 years during which I had my daughter followed 21 months later by my son (neither of those counts as nightmarish, of course), and turned out to be in an abusive relationship. There followed homelessness, moving between temporary accommodation, living in a relative's attic and eventually a council flat, being chased for debts and tax fraud that had been committed in my name but not by me, going to court to prevent my abuser having contact with my children, much emotional anguish, and probably PTSD (undiagnosed but strongly suspected). Whenever my children were sleeping I worked on philosophy publications and literally dozens of unsuccessful academic job applications, which eventually culminated in a successful one - another research post at the University of Oxford. I stayed in that post for around 18 months before moving to Royal Holloway. As a solo parent with a full-time job and a long commute, I don't get to travel much to conferences, and I don't attend many evening events - at least for a few years, after which I'm hoping to conscript a couple of free taxi drivers. Other than that, my life is relatively normal.