On Rejection: Janet Saidi
Hey pals! I’m so excited to grace your inboxes with another one of our On Rejection interviews! I met Janet Saidi in a little pop culture group for Substack Grow, and I have loved getting to read her work on Jane Austen ever since. While my research focused on Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I took an entire class at the Sorbonne about Jane Austen and book-to-film adaptation. Reading Janet’s work has been like doing that class all over again—but in English and without a grueling final exam. I especially like her post on the Bad Dads of Jane Austen.
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Hi Janet! Tell us about a time you experienced rejection.
So many to choose from!
I very recently got passed on for an editor role at a brilliant publication, and I have to say I’m so experienced at rejections that it was actually a completely enjoyable process. I learned some things and made interesting connections and friends in the process.
But I should go back a lot further for an example. One of my first and most dramatic rejections was interviewing for a job as a communications director at an influential contemporary art museum in Southern California. I got a new suit, brushed up on contemporary art, gave it my absolute all, and was ultimately rejected.
How did you get over it?
Two things: First, the museum team I interviewed with was candid and gave feedback when I asked for it. I had come in a close second in the final round, and the museum director had apparently said he wondered whether I’d be happy in the job. As soon as I heard that, it was like a light went off: He was right! I would not have been happy in the job! I would have spent that entire, relatively well-paid and luxurious experience pining for ways to express myself creatively. To this day I’m grateful to that museum director for the insight.
Secondly, I got super lucky with a complete coincidence that is worth mentioning because it shows the randomness of things: A few months after that interview process I landed a job as a producer on a live public-radio talk show, which was not nearly as well paid or stable but was my dream job (my first job in public radio, and I still work in that field today).
The person who beat me out for that museum job was now calling me regularly to pitch ideas for our radio talk show. One time she asked me a bit about the job I was in and when I explained my role to her, she said, “That was just the kind of job I always wanted.”
It was so ironic that she was saying this to the person who she herself had beat out for her own job!
What that showed me is that so many decisions on these kinds of placements are pretty random. It depends on the committee, the makeup of a team and organization, a general “vibe” - and so many factors that might have nothing to do with you or your qualifications.
So while it’s hard to do, it really is best to not take it personally! (And at the same time, ask for feedback, which you can then take with a grain of salt.)
As someone who does a lot of hiring in public radio, I’ve also learned something super helpful to remember and that is: Occasionally we just get it wrong. We hire the wrong person. So, when you get a Yes, take it as a sign of how great you are. But when you get a No, don’t take it as a sign of anything necessarily. It’s very likely to do with them, and a host of variables, and not about you.
If you could go back and tell yourself anything right before that experience, what would you say?
I would say: Money isn’t everything! Do the things that bring you passion, flow, and community. That museum job was great but it just wasn’t me, and it would have taken me off a career trajectory that has been very much about people and community needs and that has been my happy place.
Some of Jane Austen's most memorable plot lines include rejection; everyone remembers Elizabeth Bennet rejecting Mr. Darcy! Is there anything we can learn from Austen about handling rejection?
What a wonderful question!
It will be no surprise to anyone that my answer is: Absolutely yes! But not necessarily for the obvious reasons.
Jane Austen knew firsthand what it felt like to experience displacement, neglect, and to be undermined as a person. And her answer to those challenges tells us something about dealing with rejection.
While it’s tempting to imagine the author of these Regency novels of manners as someone sitting serenely by a fireside with a cup of tea “scribbling” Courtship plots, the fact is that there was about a decade in Austen’s life when she did not write or revise much because of unstable housing. Her parents, whom she relied upon for shelter and subsistence, took up quite suddenly and moved to Bath, a place she hated. They didn’t have enough money to maintain themselves comfortably and moved around a lot. She and her family also lived through a time of great social and class disparities, snobbery, and familial neglect because of the randomness of inheritance laws, the class system, and the lack of a safety net.
So when her characters are navigating a world in search of courtship and marriage, the stakes are often high and are sometimes a matter of survival against the forces of societal and familial rejection.
Perhaps the novel with the most palpable sense of rejection is Persuasion (topical for Jane fans as a controversial new screen adaptation dropped on Netflix July 15). That novel is full of the sense of heroine Anne Elliot’s disappointment, regret, and the potential rejection by a man she loves and whom she herself rejected eight years previously. The regret, the disappointment, the fear, and the anger her eight-year-old rejection still inspires in her suitor, Captain Wentworth, strikes the reader with such force that we are forever passionate about Anne Elliot and about this story.
And what survival skills on dealing with rejection do we get from this story?
Through Anne Elliot, Austen shows us that you can’t control all of the forces that surround you and impact you. All you can do is to gird yourself with your best mind, heart, and soul and use all that inner armor to navigate your way and to pursue your happiness in love and in life. Then, whatever happens - a love connection or a rejection - you have yourself and your inner resources. And those inner qualities are ultimately your best resource, your best friend, your best strength.
So, onward, my Jane friends!
What are you working on now?
In my day job, I am emerging into a new role as a podcast/audio producer and professor. (And it’s a role I like better than that other role I was rejected for!) In a very Jane Austen way, it allows me to shape my world with people and programs that bring integrity, meaning, and joy to my work and to journalism.
So that is very exciting. But we’re applying for a lot of ambitious proposals, so I’m sure that rejection will continue to be a huge part of my work!
At the Austen Connection, we’re continuing the conversations about the badassness of Jane Austen, and currently in production on a third series of the podcast, which will drop in a few weeks. (You can find it on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts!) See you there!
You can listen to the Austen Connection podcast and follow Janet on Twitter.
