a season of rejections
a series from a life-in-progress
In my last semester of grad school I applied to 15 artist residencies, grants, and fellowships. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after graduation and for some reason I had gotten it into my head that obviously a ~*serious*~ art career needs to start with artist residencies.
I got rejected from all 15 of them.
Mind you, each of these applications had multiple essay-style questions, so they took me anywhere from a few hours to a few days to complete. I felt like I had poured so much of myself into them (and I think that was exactly the problem).
I had expected to be rejected from the first few, since I knew I was applying with pitches for projects that weren’t fully in alignment with what the organizations were looking for. And I applied to them anyway, because I wanted to get better at writing about my art.
I was much more intentional in choosing the next batch. The opportunities were in the new media / electronic arts space, I had learned to look at the organizations’ mission statements and previous residents’ works (including quite a few that were alumni from my grad program) to tailor my applications, and I felt like I had a non-zero chance.
Lol apparently I had zero chance.
And in the final batch, I applied to opportunities where I felt like my skill set and project were so aligned with what they were looking for, that I started making tentative life plans with those residencies in them. (That was embarrassing.)
The first few rejections were kinda cool—like oh, of course I’m getting rejected, I’m applying in a new field, this is a sign that I’m really pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. And then the next few started to affect me a bit. By the 14th and 15th rejection, I was (in a two-day malaise) like, “oh NO, it’s gotta be me, there’s got to be something wrong with me.”
There is and there isn’t.
From every place I was rejected from, they cited a record level of applicants for the same number of positions. If they received 300 applications and only had 5 spots, of course they were going to go for the applicants with the proven track record of previous residencies.
But at the same time, I hadn’t represented myself well in those applications. (And this is purely my speculation, since most of these organizations are non-profits with very limited resources, they couldn’t give individualized feedback) I was so excited about applying as a brand new, fledgeling ~artiste~ that I never mentioned my 12 years of experience in a very related field. I wanted to apply with my new data physicalization and installation work, but I failed to mention all of my data art and creative coding experience.
My friends also pointed out that my applications explained the projects I wanted to work on, but didn’t attempt to sell the project to the reader at all. I was failing to make the person on the other side excited about my work. I realized that I was writing these applications like I write my talks, where people have already shown up. They’ve already bought in. The panelists for these residencies have not.
And when I described these rejections to my life coach (you’ll hear about her a lot), she immediately observed, “Shirley, you’ve made yourself small again.” I had thought that, as someone brand new to the field, that I should show humility. But what I hadn’t realized was that my humility manifests in ways that are a complete disservice to me. I limit myself in the opportunities that I take on, I fail to mention any of my previous achievements.
My friend once told me she limits herself to 45 minutes on these residency applications, because that is the amount time she is willing to spend (the cost) given the Expected Value (the benefit she enjoys from the residency multiplied by probability of her getting it). (I love this application of economics haha.)
I can’t quite limit myself to 45 minutes since I’m such a slow writer, but taking a page out of her book, I am instead drastically cutting down the number of opportunities I apply to. And I’ve also decided to only apply to the big opportunities, that take advantage of the full diversity of my experiences as both a data professional and a fledgling artist.
I’ll keep you updated on how those go!
P.S. it’s been a tough job market this year, and I have heard of friends that have been rejected and/or never heard back from 400, 700 places. Those numbers really put my 15 into perspective, and my heart goes out to everyone facing the rough economy this year.