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Conversations with students afraid of failure has me once again reflecting on my CV of Failures. For those still petrified by failure, stunned into stillness, it triggers memories of the failures I’ve struggled most into my management tactic to treat professional failures as experiments.

Modesty hat off, elements of my current career look super successful. It wasn’t always so (and isn’t as flashy as looking solely at my ‘normal’ CV would have you believe. The fellowship I’m on now is not the only one I’ve ever had. I’ve gone through the non-tenure-tracked posts and, on multiple occasions, faced the possibility of having no income, no extended contract, no continuity. Nothing but impending trips to the job centre.

It was in dark times like these that I had to learn - the hard way - that many of the metrics on which I’d so far judged my ‘success’ didn’t matter at all to others, outside of academia, to whom I sought possible employment, possible career changes and pivots.

It’s only with such failures that I’ve truly encountered the possibilities of careers that aren’t traditionally tracked, not confined to one ladder.

Allow me to reemphasize an old point:

Please consider putting together your own CV of Failures.

Consider who it will help, after it first helps you.

If you have a question for Marc, upload an audio recording for it to be featured on a later Q&A episode!