I reviewed my success rate for an ECR mentoring talk. Surprisingly I noticed the funding decisions on proposals made 15-25y ago bore little resemblance to which had the best plans with benefit of hindsight. A big lesson in what rejections mean and don’t mean. But they still hurt!

Thanks for sharing. The more we do that, the easier it gets for us all and the fewer great young scientists we lose from research because of total misunderstanding about what rejection does and doesn’t mean.

“Smile!”, they said, “Things could be worse.”

So I smiled …. and they did get worse.
😢

So sorry Bryan. Wishing you strength at this difficult time.