A list of my "rejection" history

I have been learning and practicing the science of well-being, largely inspired by an online lecture by Dr. Laurie Santos at Yale, which can be found at: 

https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being/

As one practice, I complied this list of "my rejection history".

Some of us compare our own publication record with other people's and feel that we are not accomplishing as much as we should (i.e. "social comparison"). Some of us, including myself, look at other people's CV or their publication profiles on the web, and unconsciously get in the dark pitfall of social comparison. The evidence-based research implies that this behavior is just a waste of time and has a negative impact on our self-esteem (or "happiness"). This seems right and empirically validated based on my personal experience. According to some research alluded to in that online course by Dr. Santos above, looking upwards makes us feel worse about ourselves; looking downwards does not make us feel any better. So we should stop doing it. Our CV on the web is like SNS --- it only shows the "glorious and successful" aspect of our academic life.

People tell me that I publish a lot. The course by Dr. Santos really made me realize that I was (and still am) on the "hedonic treadmill". I kept thinking "if only I publish this paper X in Journal Y, I would be so happy and stop worrying about other issues in life". I was so wrong. And I admit that I keep making the same mistake again and again. (If you're curious why, check out the online course!)

But the point of this exercise lies somewhere else. Just in case you think that my publication record is filled with glory and success, here's my rejection record. It is not comprehensive, but it shows how many rejections I have received. Most of the time, the paper was rejected for good reasons. Sometimes I revised the rejected piece and published it somewhere else. Other times, the reviewers and the editors were right. The papers were not good research, so I let them go. The point of this exercise is, to repeat, to demonstrate that the CV that people put on their website is like your profile in SNS. What happens if we attempt to share our more accurate picture of our academic life, including our rejection record, the miserable aspect of our career?

Actually, there is a more positive purpose associated with this attempt as well. I hope that this list can be taken to be encouraging for students and young scholars. It is ok to be rejected! Or more generally put, "it is ok not to be ok". Here is another insight that I learned from the research reviewed by Dr. Santos. We predict that getting a rejection feels terrible and ruins your life for an extended period of time. We seem to overestimate the impact and duration of that negative feeling. In reality, however, while it does feel crappy for a few days, it won't be as bad as you think it is going to be, and it won't last long. Our intuitions about how bad it's going to feel are simply wrong. Well, if that bad feeling persists for such a long time, how could I compile this list?

** The following list is not comprehensive. My brain is doing what's right for me: erasing bad memories.

** I excluded those papers for which I am not the first/primary author of. I have many co-authored papers which have been rejected (some of which I take near my heart, just as much as my first-authored papers). It's probably safe to assume that the actual list will thus be twice as long, much likely to be three times longer.

** I figured that I should make the journal names anonymous. I have no negative feelings toward them, but listing their names can convey a wrong information.

** Ordered reverse-chronologically, but only roughly so.

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- A paper on cumulativitivy in sound symbolism was rejected by X.

- A paper on Japanese wh-intonation was rejected by X.

- The first experimental study on Pokemon names was rejected by X.

- The first experimental study on Pokemon names with English speakers was rejected by X.

- A paper on the effect of syllable structure on durational patterns in Japanese was rejected by X.

- A MaxEnt analysis of sound symbolism was rejected by X.

- A paper on Pokemon move names was rejected by X and again by Y.

- A paper on the orthographic influence of rendaku and Lyman's Law was rejected by X.

- A paper on cd-myth busters translation project was rejected by X.

- A paper on tonal contrasts in Drenjonkhe was rejected by X.

- A paper on using Pokemon data for teaching was rejected by X.

- A report on using MyVoice for teaching was rejected by X.

- A paper on jaw movement was rejected by X.

- An EGG paper on geminate voicing in Japanese was rejected by X.

- A paper on Japanese [r] was rejected by X.

- A paper on identity avoidance on rendaku was rejected by X and then by Y.

- A paper on the relationship between phonological assimilation and the perceptibility of place contrast was rejected by X.

- A paper on spectral continuity was rejected by X.

- A paper on task-effects in phonological judgment was rejected by X.

- A paper on rendaku and Lyman's Law was rejected by X.

- A paper on accentual pattern of a particular suffix in Japanese was rejected by X.

- A paper on phonological opacity in Japanese was rejected by X.

- A paper on gemination in Japanese mimetics was rejected by X.

- A paper on the perceptibility of geminate contrasts was rejected by X.

- My first generals paper was rejected by X.