Rejection - February 5, 2025

Hi, I’m Sai. I a PhD student in computer vision and rejection has been kicking my ass. This last year I have 14 rejections (and no acceptances) from conferences such as CVPR, ECCV, and AAAI.  It’s cruel when the thing you love so much, rejects you over and over again. I pour my soul into the work I do, and for someone to read my work in 30 minutes and bash it to hell has now become something I’m slowly becoming numb to. It’s strange, as I face more and more rejection, I learn how much my craft means to me. Every time I receive a rejection, there’s never even a part of me that wants to quit. It just reminds me how in love I am with my craft. The conferences may bash my art, but I’ve never felt more inspired to keep painting. It’s quite the powerful thing. To know that regardless of what happens, you’re gonna keep painting. It’s a little psychotic, but feels great. Research is my art, I create paintings of the unknown. My paintings are misunderstood, but they are not bad. Just perceived by the wrong crowd. 

I have been contemplating rejection a lot over the past few days, triggered by a bunch of rejection in a nice bundle from CVPR. I worry that I might not be able to work with group from Big Institution 1 or 2 cause I don’t have the publications to garner their attention and sometimes lose sight of the big picture. I love what I do, and I’m gonna do it for the rest of my life. Even if I get rejected for the next 10-20 years straight, I still got plenty of time left to get some work accepted. I am lucky to have a support system of mentors who have assured me that my work is good and that I’ve just drawn a bad hand. They have also told me tales of their years of rejections to help me put mine into perspective. I am starting to understand my rejection is normal, common place, and just the norm in the academic world or perhaps the world in general. I’ve started thinking that in this line of work, perhaps one of the greatest traits you can have is an immunity to rejection. So, reject me all you want, I won’t stop. I’ll keep painting and my last act will be a brush stroke on canvas. 

My name is Sai. I’ve dared to submit 14 times to the best computer vision conferences in the world and I’ve been rejected over and over again. But know this, I won’t stop painting. My singles will turn into symphonies over the years. I’ll create symphonies that only those who dare to fail can imagine. I am not scared of failure, I am scared of having not tried. I am an artist, a creative, an inventor of unknown worlds. All right thats enough poetry, I best go back to painting.