The Strength in Struggle
How to Find Meaning and Resilience Through Academic Failure
I was a failure.
A young law professor in my first tenure-track position, staring at my first journal publication rejection. Maybe they had made a mistake. After all, I had never imagined becoming a professor when I was younger.
Perhaps I truly didn’t belong here after all.
When I first stepped into the classroom as a tenure-track faculty member, I thought I was prepared. I had navigated law school, worked as a lawyer in a big law firm and a small non-profit, survived a two-year teaching fellowship, and understood academia’s competitive nature. I knew how to work hard, tough it out, and even ignore the naïve comments about my career prospects. I had my game face.
But the tenure track was an entirely different challenge.
It wasn’t just that legal scholarship was challenging. Teaching expectations, research demands, and service obligations were unpredictable, requiring a new kind of creativity and time management. And outside of work, life was changing just as rapidly. I had just gotten married, and my wife and I were welcoming our first child in my first year of teaching.
I was juggling it all: mentor, educator, researcher, committee member, writer, husband, new father, with each role offering another opportunity to spread myself too thin.
I remember staring at the rejection email like a child gazing into a wishing well, hoping magic—or perhaps blind faith—might somehow reverse the decision. But it was too late. Subsequent law reviews sent the same message: “We appreciate the opportunity to read and consider your work, but unfortunately we are unable to accept your piece for publication.”
There would be no magic that day.
As the months passed, things didn’t turn around. Teaching evaluations came in below my expectations. I finally admitted I needed help. I couldn’t keep pretending I had everything under control, trying to project the image of the naturally brilliant academic. I didn’t have everything under control.
So I humbled myself, swallowed my pride, and asked my colleagues for guidance on balancing teaching, research, writing, and service. And in doing so, I learned something far more valuable.
Failure is part of academia. Embracing it is what makes growth possible.
Turning Suffering into Academic Growth
A few years ago, I read Man’s Search for Meaning, the psychological memoir by Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl. In it, Frankl reflects on the horrors of surviving Auschwitz and the lessons he learned about his life’s primary purpose—his quest for meaning.
I was deeply moved by his ability to find meaning in such unimaginable suffering. His insights resonated with me. For many academics, the search for meaning through knowledge creation and dissemination is a driving force.
But what struck me most were his views on suffering and failure, two experiences that I had tried to avoid early in my career.
We all experience pain in different ways, and I would never compare my struggles to those of a Holocaust survivor. But Frankl’s story taught me something profound. If he could use failure and suffering as a path to growth, then surely I could, too, in my academic journey.
From Man’s Search for Meaning, I learned three ways to grow through failure.
1. Turn suffering into academic achievement.
Receiving my first journal rejection was a humbling experience.
Failure can be humiliating. I didn’t want anyone to think I was less qualified or capable than my colleagues. For some academics, that first rejection is enough to make them retreat—locking away bold research questions and settling for the safety of incremental work. Others take it as confirmation that they simply got the ‘short end of the stick’ and were never meant to succeed in academia.
It’s hard to envision a promising future when your world is colored by rejection letters, struggling students, and the relentless pressure to publish. It’s even harder to picture yourself earning tenure when you see brilliant colleagues denied advancement year after year.
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes how this mindset—the feeling that everything is going wrong—broke many of his fellow prisoners. Instead of viewing their suffering as a test of inner strength, they lost all sense of purpose. He could see it in their eyes, in the curve of their shoulders—it was enough to let him know that something inside them had given up.
But Frankl refused to quit. He found meaning in his suffering, writing:
“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task . . . His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”
For Frankl, suffering became a story of resilience, faith, and ultimately, triumph.
Academics often hide their struggles, afraid of seeming weak or inadequate. We bury our rejections, avoid bold ideas, and try to project an image of effortless success. But our fears offer an opportunity for courage. Frankl believed that “there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for [each] tear bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage—the courage to suffer.”
Our failures—if we let them—can be more than personal defeats. They can become lessons in resilience, opportunities to inspire students and junior colleagues, and testimonies of what it means to persevere.
Before we go further, a quick reality check:
If you’ve ever felt like your career is being weighed down by setbacks or failures, you’re not alone. But the failures we face—rejected publications, tough evaluations, or unfulfilled expectations—are not the end of the road. They are opportunities to find deeper purpose and resilience in our work.
At The Tenure Track, we help you transform these challenges into opportunities. We focus on more than just research and writing. We help you build a foundation that ensures your scholarship is meaningful, impactful, and engaged with.
Ready to turn struggle into purpose? Subscribe to The Tenure Track for strategies to grow your scholarship, expand your network, and make a lasting impact.
2. Leverage academic guilt as an opportunity to change.
After my first journal rejection, I wanted to keep it a secret.
I doubted myself, wondering if I belonged. Guilt crept in. Maybe I wasn’t smart enough. Maybe I was wasting university resources that could go to more deserving scholars. So, I hid my failures.
But keeping our academic setbacks hidden can be damaging in the long run.
Even if we learn to face our fears, the guilt of past mistakes can still haunt us. When too many negative experiences are trapped in our memories, they can shape a limiting narrative about our academic future, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie poignantly noted in her TEDx talk. Rather than letting guilt hold us back, we can use it as fuel for growth—transforming it into something that propels us toward becoming better scholars.
Dr. Frankl reflected on Auschwitz, saying:
“We had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.”
When we focus too much on our expectations for our academic careers—landing the perfect job, gaining early tenure, receiving recognition from peers, etc.—we miss the chance to find meaning in the challenges we face. Frankl suggested that we shift the question from what life can give us, to what life expects from us.
What does academia expect from me as I balance research, teaching, service, and family?
What does life expect from me as I shape young legal minds?
Frankl believed,
“life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
It wasn’t until I started viewing my failures as opportunities for growth that I began to improve. I joined faculty writing groups, made connections across disciplines, sought pedagogical training, and questioned my teaching methods.
In so doing, I unknowingly inspired others to take similar steps. By making intentional choices in the face of hardship, we not only improve our own futures but also have the power to better those around us.
3. Use the transitory nature of academia as motivation.
Even after acknowledging that I needed help, I still struggled.
At times, I questioned whether the struggle was worth it. Am I truly making a difference through my legal scholarship? Will I ever find work-life balance in this demanding career, especially with a young family?
Some colleagues seem to publish effortlessly in top journals, while others struggle throughout their careers for recognition. We hear about narrow-minded academics receiving abundant funding and accolades, while innovative scholars with promising ideas are denied tenure before they leave their mark.
At times, it feels like the struggle is pointless, especially when obstacles seem insurmountable. It’s true that some academics never make it to tenure, or they never escape the publish-or-perish pressure before burnout takes its toll.
Yet, despite the fleeting nature of academic life, we must strive to find meaning in something greater than ourselves and press on.
As Dr. Frankl said, “The hopelessness of our struggle does not detract from its dignity and its meaning.” We must adopt an attitude of faith and optimism, learning to believe in the promise of something we can’t yet see because its fulfillment lies in the future.
Dr. Frankl captured this idea when he wrote:
“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problem of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all of the richness set down in these notes.”
For me, each academic struggle, every hardship, helps me grow professionally and brings me closer to my ultimate purpose.
I’ve learned to view rejected articles, difficult classes, and overwhelming service commitments as signs that I am becoming stronger, more resilient, and inching closer to my goal of being the best legal scholar and educator I can be.
It’s not easy, but each day presents new opportunities to grow.
Embracing Vulnerability in Academic Life
As an academic community, we must find meaning in our failures and transform how we relate to one another in the process.
We must be willing to admit that, as a profession, we have fallen short. The rising mental health crisis among faculty, the unsustainable work expectations, and the lingering effects of the pandemic show that our institutions have failed many of us in profound ways. But we must also recognize that, as individuals, we have contributed to these failures in our own ways.
Although failure and defeat can threaten to rob us of hope and confidence, Dr. Frankl’s story teaches us that without suffering, human life cannot be complete. We must shift our focus not only to finding meaning in our individual journeys but also to considering how we, as a collective, are being questioned by life every day.
I invite you to take three concrete steps before this semester ends:
First, share one professional setback with a trusted colleague—not as a complaint, but as a genuine opening for connection. Your vulnerability might be exactly what they need to feel less alone in their own struggles.
Second, create a “failure resume” documenting your rejections, setbacks, and disappointments, alongside the lessons they taught you. Review it when imposter syndrome strikes, and consider sharing portions with your students or mentees to normalize struggle.
Third, establish or join a cross-disciplinary support group at your institution, focused on navigating the emotional landscape of academia. Meet monthly to discuss not just strategies for success, but also strategies for finding meaning when success feels distant.
As academics, we must ask ourselves,
“How are we being questioned by academia, and how will we choose to respond?”
We cannot continue to solve everything on our own. Instead, we must recognize our failures and work for real change in how we approach the competing demands of teaching, research, writing, service, and work-life balance.
As Dr. Frankl teaches in one of my favorite lines from his book:
“Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act right now.”
What will you do differently today, knowing what you now know about the meaning that can be found in academic struggle?
Your next rejection, difficult class, or overwhelming committee assignment isn’t just an obstacle to overcome. It’s an invitation to find deeper meaning in your academic journey.
I look forward to hearing your stories of transformation.
Becoming Full,
P.S. As always, thank you for reading this week’s issue of The Tenure Track. If you found this article helpful, I encourage you to share it with a colleague or friend who might benefit from these insights. Together, let’s continue to build a supportive and creative academic community.