Melanie Stefan
Appearances
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I think it's very true that scientists are very unwilling to quit. Grit got us through school and it got us through undergrad and through like getting A's. I think it's like the only trait you need in order to get a PhD. It's not about how smart you are or like how creative you are or anything. You can get a PhD if you're just willing to grit it out, essentially.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
As you can probably hear from my accent, I was born in Austria and then I studied biology and math at university and decided to be a scientist. I went to England to do a PhD and then travelled to different places to study. learn and study and ultimately work in science.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I completed my PhD in 2009. I started my undergrad in 1999, so it had been already like 10 years worth of training. And then suddenly after 10 years of training for that, I wasn't sure if it was going to work out. I applied for several grants to get two or three years of postdoc funding and I was rejected from most of them. In terms of ego, I'm not going to lie, that was a bit difficult.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
Like who am I really if the thing that I've trained for for the last 10 years and the thing that I thought I was is not actually what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I think going into science, most people kind of think they will cure cancer or something. And then once you get into the work, you will solve problems, but it's only like a very, very tiny bit of the overall problem.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
Like even if you do cancer research, it's going to be one particular mutation in one particular type of cancer in one particular cell line or something. And it's such a small, small piece of the puzzle. Also, it turns out that grit is not actually sufficient, right? It's necessary, but you can be the hardest worker ever and something can still go wrong. That went really dark now.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
If you're a young football player and something doesn't work out, you know that you're not the first person that that happens to, because it happened to Ronaldinho. As a scientist, it's kind of the other way around, right? Like, failures are not discussed in public.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
I had been to a lot of talks and a lot of conferences and things like that, and speakers, famous, big, you know, important scientists get introduced. with like a CV and it's all like, I did a PhD at this awesome place and they posted at this awesome place and then they were hired and they got this grant and blah, blah, blah, you know. And so when you fail...
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
you kind of feel like you're the only person that that happens to. You feel extremely alone with it. And so this is why I thought, well, maybe we could use a little bit more public discussion of that. And my idea was that scientists who are famous and big and successful could actually publish their CV of failures in order to give younger scientists a bit more perspective.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
So I started my CV of failures and then I have to say, honestly, there were too many failures to keep track of after a while.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
Johannes Haushofer published his CV of failures and he was a Princeton professor. So now it was a big thing because someone who was clearly objectively very successful stepped forward and said, well, here are the things that I failed at. They did it on social media and it became quite the trend. I mean, not viral in the sense that viral things get viral, but like, you know, science viral.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
He had said that he had a CV of failures for a few years and occasionally just sent it to people who needed it. Maybe a friend who had just experienced a rejection or a failure. And so as a way of saying, look, this happens to everyone. And I'm sure that he didn't expect such a big impact, but there was.
Freakonomics Radio
How to Succeed at Failing, Part 3: Grit vs. Quit (Update)
Sometimes I thought, like, this will never be me, right? Like, I will never be that successful.