Rejecting Rejection (or Why Not Getting Into Your Top School is a Gift in Disguise)
April 1st. A-Day. The day that high school students around the world refresh their email with bated breath — eyes tight, fingers nervously tapping on keyboards.
Until — “Brown Admissions Decision” shows up on the top of the inbox. Breathing stops. Cursor skitters over to the email, clicks it. Deep breath, starts reading:
Dear …. ,
The Brown Board of Admission has completed its evaluation of more than 19,000 applications to the Class of 2020, and it is with great regret that I must inform you that your application could not be included among our acceptances. To deny admission is an unhappy business, as much for those responsible for the decision as for the candidate who is turned away.
A tightness in the chest. Vision blurred. A crushed feeling. Sadness, tinged with anger. Frustration. Dreams denied. For many thousands, 4/1 was day of jubilation — but for tens of thousands more, that was an unhappy day. Well, let me say to you: its not over.
Getting rejected from the things you love could be possibly the single best thing that could happen to you. Why?
For the vast majority of us in the developed world, we have mostly gotten what we want. Food. Shelter. Friends. The latest video game for X’mas. The new skirt from Abercrombie. Rarely are there things we care about outside of our (or our parents’) reach.
And so this college acceptance business might be the first time that we have slaved away over something, with hope and yearning in our hearts, only to be slapped rudely in the face with a rejection. That rejection, is a wake-up call.
Its a reminder — that in this world, nothing comes for free. If you really want something, you have to go after it. Hard. Your rejection is your test to prove to yourself, and others, how much you really want something. And you know what’s the best part? You get to the take this test as many times as you want to. Because you have as many chances as you are willing to take, before you give up. You define your own limits.
Before Jack Ma founded Alibaba, he was a failure. He was systematically rejected from every institution that he wanted to be a part of, and from his short stature and unique facial structure, people made fun of him as “外星人”. An alien, who doesn’t belong.
But instead of being discouraged, shriveled up, and defeated, Jack Ma (and many others like him) took the fire of all those rejections, and used it as the crucible to forge their new selves. Better. Stronger. More capable.
Here are two strategies to deal with your A-day failure:
- Apply to be a transfer student. Start preparing today. Some of my best friends at Brown and other schools are transfers. Why? Because transferring means that you have made an intentional decision. You have taken your life into your own hands. In the coming days, I’ll write another post on lessons drawn from those who transferred, how they did it, and what they learned along about the way. Follow me for the update :)
- OR Build your dream, where you are right now. We glorify unreachable places. Ask yourself, why did I want it so much? If it was for the prestige, the “brass ring”, being able to drop the H-bomb, then sorry, you are out of luck.
But if it was because you wanted to upgraded your environment, learn something you cared a lot about, fulfill a larger purpose — then you don’t need someone else’s acceptance. The crazy thing is that today, ALL of the knowledge that you could want in the world already exists on the internet: Coursera, EdX, Khan, Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner. All you need is to open a web browser, and you can start learning. Yet so many students conflate going to the in-person lecture with actual learning. Don’t.
Peter Thiel — who was one of the founders of Paypal, Palantir, and early investor in Facebook — dreamed of the highest honor: “the highest honor in a law student’s world is unambiguous: out of tens of thousands of graduates each year, only a few dozen get a Supreme Court clerkship”. He was interviewed and then rejected by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Speaking of the experience, he said:
My meetings with the Justices went well. I was so close to winning this last competition. If only I got the clerkship, I thought, I would be set for life. But I didn’t. At the time, I was devastated.
So you got rejected from your dream. What does this mean for you? You have two choices.
If you take the blue pill: you accept society’s decision of where it puts you. You decide that life doesn’t always go where you want it to, and that you should make fewer plans. Be less ambitious.
If you take the red pill: you reject rejection, and dedicate yourself to the painful and thrilling journey of wresting control of your fate from others, and becoming your own author. You reject their reality and substitute your own. You will pound down doors, phones and pavement to convince those that they should take you seriously, and you will not stop. You will build a billionaire dollar company. Become a best selling author. Travel the world and see its wonders. Become President. And then go back, and build a building on that silly campus that didn’t know how to recognize your potential….
Share this post, if you choose red.
What does failure mean to me? Read about how I got rejected 4 times in my job hunt.
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Ps. If you resonated with this post, you should check out Prometheus Education. We are looking for those hungry to leave their mark on the world. Applications close 4/15/2016.
