| Website | https://www.adinaakbik.eu/ |
Adina Akbik
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Senior Assistant Professor of European Politics @Leiden University, Fellow @Hertie School. Working on #EU decision-making, #EMU accountability, #EUAgencies, #JHA
Last but not least, to my wonderful husband Alex: thank you for being there for all the highs and the lows <3. Now I get to do this thing! (11/12)
To my emotional support group PolSciLeiden – Roos Haer, Jelena Belic, and Becky Ploof - thanks a ton for listening to all my whining over the last year and watching way too many videos of my pitch!
Outside Leiden, I’m grateful to my good friends Bastian Becker, Bruno Castanho Silva, Marta Migliorati, Christian Freudlsperger, and Mark Dawson for all the input to the application and mock interviews. Same goes for Anke Obendiek and Markus Jachtenfuchs. (10/12)
Next, many thanks to all the colleagues who participated in feedback rounds on the application and to mock interviews: Nikoleta Yordanova, Karolina Pomorska, Daniel Thomas, Tom Theuns, Hilde van Meegdenburg, Francesco Ragazzi, Billy Tsagkroni, Niels van Willigen, Kevin Köhler, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl and Claire Vergerio.
Special thanks to @TomTheuns, who turned my presentation script into a poem and helped me practice my intonation and the pronunciation of Dutch names. (9/12)
Second, I’m grateful to Wouter Veenendaal, our former research director, who was THE main reviewer of my resubmitted application and encouraged me to persevere when getting a rejection one week before the new deadline. (8/12)
Having said all this, I would like to acknowledge the impressive infrastructure of the Institute of Political Science and the FSW at Leiden University, which offer extensive support for grant applications.
But nothing is possible without people, and I have so many people to thank for contributing to the process. First, thanks to Joop van Holsteyn and Matthew di Giuseppe, who helped me narrow down the original project idea about 2 years ago. (7/12)
Ofc I will never know what exactly tipped the balance in my favour: was it my interview performance, the revised proposal (15-20% updated), the new panel, different reviewers, or did I simply get another roll of the dice? In any case, I learned something valuable, which I hope will stick with me for the future. If you have already figured this out, lucky you! Some of us are slower to catch on. (6/12)
As a result, for my 2nd application, I simply focused on the project, whether I thought it was cool and a great way to spend my time in the next 5 years. This realization meant that I went to the interview with a very different mindset than last time. I was much more relaxed bcs I knew there were many factors outside my control: the reviewers, the panel, the other candidates etc. I felt confident and more ‘at peace’ with whatever result will come. All I could do was give it my best shot. (5/12)
And while it’s normal to look for external validation in any profession, in the end what we think is more important bcs there will always be people who like our work and others who don’t. After the rejection, I asked myself: did I still think my project was worthwhile? Was there anywhere else I could apply for funding? (There always is!) Could I conduct a small part of the project even without the funding? (4/12)
Unintentionally, I came to link my own self-worth as a researcher to the outcome. So when it didn’t work out, I felt crushed. Like I did my best and it was not good enough. Upon reflection (and with help from a therapist), I understood that as long as my professional self-worth is defined by this type of external validation, I’ll always lack confidence and look for the next thing to prove myself. (3/12)
First, I obviously acknowledge the systemic competition in academia and the high pressure to apply for/win grants, especially for early-career researchers. But I also realized that we do a lot of harm to ourselves, and there are healthier ways of ‘playing the game.’ For my first application, I got so hung up on the result – the need to ‘prove’ that I can do it and that I didn’t waste months on a project that will never pan out. (2/12)