Small power, Big Anxiety: Navigating Unease with Sending Rejection Emails as an Early-Career Academic

Dear Reader,

I’m not who you are, and what your story is. But if you’re here, you’re likely an early career academic, or at least someone slowly gaining institutional power in whatever capacity you’re working in. In this note, I’m writing about my own unease and anxiety in exercising my little institutional power, as evidenced in my context of having to write rejection emails.

Let me start with some context. As I write this, I am an international student to the US, from Calcutta, India, and as such am subjected to systems of power and privilege that I’m sure other people in similar situations might understand. In this more specific context, I am a rising 4th year Ph.D. candidate in the department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. As a part of my program and indeed my training as an independent academic researcher, I am required to organize and lead research groups with students of all levels across my University.

I led my first research group in the second quarter of my first year, a small group of 4 students in an online-only quarter. Although I have advertised for and led several groups since, I have been fortunate so far to have been in situations where applicants self-selected themselves for participation based on my criteria and times, such that I’ve never had to send out rejections to applicants. Not until now.

This quarter, I advertised a self-directed research group, inviting upper-division undergraduate and Master’s students to participate in 1-on-1 research with me. The goal of this group is for students to pitch me research questions and methods that align with my own interests, such that I can support and mentor them in their research endeavors. I am to gain experience and practice mentoring budding researchers in pursuit of my eventual goals of becoming a University-level professor, while students would stand to gain skills and potential traction in their career goals after graduation. As a solitary student leading this group while also trying to prepare for my Dissertation proposal and graduate from this Ph.D. on time while also managing my own teaching commitments, I advertised the group as having the capacity to accept 5–6 individuals or projects.

In the six days the application was open, I received 22 applications. 22.

While also dealing with personal and non-academic situations, I have been severely anxious over the past few days, in this evaluatory role that I knew would one day come, but I expected to be more prepared for it. I keep asking myself what authority I, as a young early-career academic who would not have been here without the opportunities I have been given when I was in these applicants’ shoes, have to turn down their requests for a similar shot. At the same time, there remains the overwhelming impostor syndrome that I still have not been able to shake off, the feeling that I have no right to be providing them any research mentorship or indeed give them skills to further their careers which they could and should seek elsewhere.

But finally, after I did make a few decisions, came the uneviable task of writing rejection emails. Anyone who knows me, knows how difficult I find it to say no. In academia and in life, I have built a habit of always saying yes to people and things without sometimes considering my own capacity to execute what I signed up for why also practicing self-care. Indeed, I did very seriously consider saying yes to all my applicants and bring on the same pressure again, a decision that would have undoubtedly set me up for a brain-shattering year with little sleep and self-care, a decision that people who love and care about me did not let me take. To not do that, meant that I had to teach myself to write rejection emails.

I started as my anxiety and impostor syndrome taught me to, by reading the long list of rejections I’ve personally gotten. If you’ve got one, and I’m sure you have, you’ll know what I’m talking about. “Thank you for your application,” “large number of applications,” “unable to move forward with your application,” etc. etc. etc. Copy-pasted, done-to-death, overused text, sent out in mass-generated emails. Reading them reminded me of the feelings of failure and disappointment I’ve gone through over the years, and yet, when I started writing mine, I found myself going back to those words.

After several hours of hand-shaking anxiety and several thousand words backspaced, I landed on a format I was satisfied with. Copy-pasted and common rejection text, followed by a section explaining why I was unable to accept their application while still providing them motivation to keep pursuing their research goals. I have attached one of them here.

I do not know how these will land, to be honest. I am writing this article immediately after queuing the last one up for tomorrow morning, and I could be making a mistake in my choice of structure. I do not know.

I’m writing this in the hope that you, my reader, a potentially early career individual with low (but hopefully, rising) institutional power being made to exercise it, can find comfort in the fact that you’re not alone in this. For people like us who have grown up with low power/privilege and have been on the receiving end of power decisions being left feeling how unfair it is, the resolve to not do the same when you gain power is strong but difficult to execute. There is so much research on how people with low power being the ones who exercise the most caution and are the most cautious, but not nearly enough on how not cared for they are as they overextend themselves to provide care for people with lower privileges under the auspices of institutions driven by capitalistic motivations. This work is hard, I feel it, and if you’ve done it before, you probably know that. But as people who have been lower on the ladder, we must hold on. These are growing pains, and make no mistake that they are painful, but these are good pains to have, pains which honor the struggles we have come through and the care we can provide ourselves and others who come after us.

I hope that we continue to be mindful in exercising the power, however little you may have, and in ways that are not overextending yourself. And if you’re ever having trouble writing rejection emails or generally reconciling your application of said power, I hope you come back to this, or reach out.