In the spring of 2020, I was waiting on a dataset from Scotland.
My dissertation depended on it. I had written my entire analysis around the codebook the Scottish government published in advance, so that the moment the data arrived I could run it and finish. I expected it in June. The Scottish government had been collecting it on a regular schedule for years. There was no reason to think it would not come.
Then the world closed.
The statisticians who would have released my data were redirected to track a virus. The release date moved to the fall. Then to the end of the year. I checked the portal every week for six months. Each time, the same notice. Delayed.
My daughter Vesa was almost three. My son Blin was almost two. They had not yet learned that life was supposed to include other children, parks, grandparents, anything outside the four walls of our apartment. I was teaching at Trinity College full-time on Zoom, recording lectures late at night so I could be present with the kids during the day.
I was supposed to defend my dissertation. I was supposed to be on the academic job market. Instead I was waiting on data that would not come, and trying to keep two toddlers entertained inside a closed world.
The defense slipped by almost a year.
When I finally got on the job market, the academic positions I had spent seven years preparing for were frozen. Universities were not hiring. The government roles I thought were a strong fit, where I had assumed citizenship and qualifications would matter, sent one callback. Consulting firms sent one callback. I applied to 65+ jobs. I was rejected by all but one.
The one that broke through was the one I almost did not apply to.
A friend named Pablo told me Amazon was hiring economists. I procrastinated for days. My PhD was not from a program tech recruiters knew by reputation. I had spent my career studying alcohol policy in Scotland. I did not see how I belonged in that company. I almost rejected myself before anyone else could.
I sent the application anyway.
That was the one that said yes.
A lot of people are sitting in their own version of that fog right now.
International students are watching visa policy shift under their feet, unsure whether the country they trained in will let them stay. Mid-career professionals are watching AI rewrite the job they trained for. Researchers are watching their funding disappear. Founders are wondering whether the assumptions they built their company on will still hold next year.
The specifics rotate. The feeling does not. The feeling is that the path you had been walking has gone quiet, and the next step has not announced itself, and you do not know whether the silence is temporary or permanent.
I cannot tell you when your data will come back. I cannot tell you which application will be the one. I can tell you what those years taught me, because I lived inside them long enough to learn three things I am still using.
The first is that you will be tempted to reject yourself before anyone else does. Do not. Let other people do the rejecting. They will be wrong often enough that the math eventually works in your favor. The application I almost did not send is the reason I am writing this newsletter.
The second is that most of what is happening to you is not personal. The data was late because a virus moved through the world. The academic market froze because no one knew what was coming. The headlines you are reading right now are not aimed at you. The work is to keep your hands busy and your mind kind.
The third is that you only need one yes. Rejections are just data points. They are not a verdict. They are noise on the way to the signal.
The path does not announce itself in advance. It announces itself only after you have walked it. The years I spent in the fog felt, at the time, like a delay. They were not. They were the work.
If you are sitting in your own version of it right now, I want you to know one thing.
The light comes. Not on the timeline you wanted. Not in the form you expected. But it comes.
Keep walking.
— Irena