Rejection is part of being an academic. Success rate on grants have dropped to 5-10%. This means you’ll get 1 bid in 10-20 submitted. Heartbreaking - yes. But you’ll get through this. We all are. You’re not alone!

Glad to see you today. I will continue with the community updates every 2 weeks, but we may move to a pre-recorded format given the low attendance. Hope this helps! If you have any questions, feel free to message me.

I've just dropped a new guide to using AnswerThis for AI-supported literature reviews. Check it out here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dawidhanak_answerthis-ai-tools-for-literature-review-activity-7423005583009787904-m_Gj Let me know if you want full demo in the comments below.

It’s blue Monday today - apparently “the most depressing day” of the year. I know we work under lots of pressure and regularly face rejections. Let’s flip this - what was your win this year? However big or small, share it with the community!

(Unless someone already figured out how to extend this… and forgot to share the method!) That’s the real constraint in academia is not talent and not lack of ambition. It's time. ​ And the higher you climb, the more people try to “spend” your time for you. - “Can you review this?” - “Can you join this board?” - “Can you guest-edit this special issue?” - “Can you jump on this committee?” - ... None of these requests are evil. But they are expensive. Because every “yes” silently steals time from something else: - Your research. - Your health. - Your family. - Your students. - Your lab. - Your community. And once you become an experienced academic, you hit a fork in the road: You can either invest your scarce hours into journal volunteering, running special issues, doing editorial work, contributing more to what I call "system maintenance". Or you can invest those hours into people. Early career researchers. The ones with potential… but not yet established careers. The ones who don’t need another gatekeeper. They need a sponsor. As for me, I chose the latter through this community. I’d rather spend my credibility making introductions, giving honest feedback, sharing what I’ve learned, and helping ECRs build careers that actually last, than collecting another “service” badge no one will remember in five years. Because journals will always find volunteers. But not every early career researcher finds someone who shows up.