For the last couple of days, I've been on annual leave, wandering around Manchester in the sunshine, and going to a couple of concerts in the evenings, one of which was a much-postponed Barenaked Ladies gig, my All Time Favourite(tm) band. I realise that this has a distinctly "Cool story, bro" feel to it, but bear with me.

As we queued to to get into the venue, wondering why everything was running so late, a couple of the venue staff, who'd clearly drawn the short straws, made their way up the line, to tell the crowd that half the band had tested positive for covid within the last couple of hours, and our options were to get a refund or to take a chance on a pretty much improvised show with the two band members who were still standing.

After a bit of teeth gnashing, I chose the latter. And, crikey, I'm glad I did. Despite having over 30 years experience in the band, they came on stage and stated quite baldly "we have literally no idea how this is going to go. But we're really going to try to give you a good night."

I don't think I'll be chucking it all in to become a band photographer anytime soon...

Did it all go perfectly? No. Could you feel the absence of the other band members? Absolutely. Was it nevertheless a total joy? It was.  The evening was a real masterclass in creativity, adaptability and the power of being vulnerable. 

Of course, it's easy to assume that taking risks and showing vulnerability is easier when you're well-known in your field and have an established track record (and, objectively, that may be true),  but from working with academic colleagues at all stages in their careers, from PGRs to professors, I know that it doesn't always feel that way.

Academia can be a hard field in which to "fail", even though most of the self-perceived failures are nothing of the sort; the rejected article, the unsuccessful grant application are simply part and parcel of academic life - which isn't to suggest that they don't take an emotional toll. 

When senior academics share their experiences of rejection, it normalises this aspect of academia really powerfully, and the positive impact that it has on less experienced colleagues can be enormous. How fantastic would it be, though, if it WASN'T so impactful? If our academic culture encouraged everyone to see failure as part of the (sorry, I hate this word, but...) journey.

Dr Rachael Hains-Wesson, writing for the LSE's Impact of Social Science blog, discusses the importance of openly, critically and systematically unpicking failure, in order to drive improvement, but also touches on an issue that can make this more difficult:

"Discussing failure honestly can make an impactful difference to our work and personal lives. However, it is never truly easy to highlight one's failure to the wider community. One needs to be careful, because in a higher education system obsessed with excellence, failure...may jeopardise our positions in an already precarious job market and working environment."

Higher Education needs all its leaders and funders to embrace failure, to enable researchers at all stages of their careers to be more open about and comfortable with failure. Failing well (full disclosure: something that I struggle with massively)  can improve our creativity and future success, which can surely only improve academic research cultures.

More immediately, and practically, it can be useful to reframe how you think about personal "failures". As Dr. John Tregoning notes in his first of two THE articles about  dealing with failure in academia,

"Failure is very rarely the end of the line. Grants are on a rolling cycle and many applications only get accepted on the 2nd or 3rd submission. That journal you were striving for is probably not as great as you thought, and there are more journals than ever, so your paper will find a home."

Everybody deals with failure differently, and - as noted above - personal circumstances can certainly impact your approach. Elizabeth Day, the novelist, journalist and creator of the excellent How To Fail podcast, sums it up neatly:

"Being honest and publicly vulnerable is not the only way to be, but it's certainly a brave and deeply humane way to be."