Awards, honors and opportunities are a bit like single socks. Once you get one, others follow, seemingly unrelated, until your drawer is overflowing in socks and pieces of cardstock with very fancy fonts. A single striped sock. An award for outreach. An unpaired athletic sock. An award for a particular article or project. A dress sock. An overall achievement award for being the bestest best at the thing.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that you just had loads of awards, and they just happened to you! You! Humble you! Because you are of course the best, and just happen to churn out better work than everyone around you. Every time.
But there’s a reason awards follow other awards. It’s not luck of the draw. It’s not even necessarily talent! Yes, sometimes there is talent and skill and work, plenty of it. But awards follow awards for the same reason, I think, that these awards tend to be dominated by men, who just happen to be doing the best work. And the same reason that the (usually white) women who do win these awards win them over and over and over again. It gets to the point where some people could probably take a crap in a can and win an award for it (Yes, a white male modern artist has done this).
Most awards or opportunities, in writing or in academia, require a nomination or application. They require someone seeing the opportunity, and thinking of you. Long enough to fill out the nomination or help with the application. Or even just tell you the application exists.
“Well then, just apply!”
This is the thing that I hear over and over. Just apply! Nominate yourself!
Lean in. So simple.
Leaning in and applying is great…but they’ll want your resume. They’ll want a list of your previous awards. What have you already won for? Prove to the committee that you have already been declared great by someone else, so the committee will know that you are indeed worthy of awarding.
That means those with awards get…more awards.
Awards are far more likely if someone on the committee recognizes your name and your previous work. You know, the previous stuff you won awards for. The previous stuff that made you famous. The famous connections you’ve already got. Even if the article or thing you submit isn’t award worthy, the committee might consider your “body of work” instead. After all, most of the committee members have also won many awards. And they know you! You won those awards too! You might even be friends. You therefore must be worthy of an award! You and the committee chair know each other.
But that’s not biased at all. Great people just happen to know each other and hang out with each other. They don’t know anyone who hasn’t won lots of awards. Or at least, they don’t know those people anymore.
Those with awards then get more awards.
Nominate yourself then! Those are usually allowed, right! Well, sometimes they are not. And even when they are…if the award committee sees a self nomination, do they take it as seriously? After all, if someone else nominated you, well then it must be a better piece! A more famous piece! You didn’t have to nominate yourself! And those who are nominated by other people tend to be people who’ve already got awards, following and fame.
And those with awards get another award.
The opportunity cost of these awards also should not be underestimated. Self-nomination, applying for the opportunity, these all take time. They take time and effort for resume polishing, application writing, editing, and more editing. They take time away from producing more things, or better things. It’s just so much easier if you’re famous enough for someone else to nominate you! You never have to take your time away from what you’re doing, and can focus on writing bigger or better things.
Besides, it’s a high opportunity cost, and a really low chance of success. I have applied each year to at least four different awards, with different amounts of work required, from an hour or two to weeks of preparation. In each case, I know my chances of success are abysmally low. In most cases, I have won no awards.
I’d meet a lot more deadlines if I just never bothered.
But we have to keep trying. These awards aren’t just single socks. They’re not just pieces of paper. They are keys that open doors to opportunities, job offers, funding for the things you really want to do.
We have to lean in. When we are tired. When our resumes are thin. We have to keep grinding.
What should we do about this imbalance? Some might say it’s meritocracy at work. The best are winning the awards because they are the best.
Maybe they’re right.
But maybe they’re not.
Maybe committees should consider the application, instead of the resume. They should catch themselves when they automatically glance for a Ivy League name. Perhaps they should catch the automatic smile when they see a name they know.
Perhaps they should remove that section asking for a separate list of all an applicant’s previous awards. What’s the point of that section, anyway?
And perhaps those people who have won all those awards should give back. Nominate someone who hasn’t won a big award yet, but who’s work they have seen and respect. Someone did that for them, once. Helped them get their first job, opportunity or award. Someone with connections or money or position.
There are few ally cookies for this work. Most people win the award and never know, or remember, who nominated them. And a lot of the applications go nowhere.
But now, the awarded ones are in a place to lift up the ladder behind them, or offer a helping hand. They are in the place to pay that opportunity cost. To put in the hours and do the nominating and the applying and the mentioning.
What will they do?
