Rejection sucks
Rejection is awful.
Whether you’re trying to get a job or a date, rejection is always possible. The kicker is it doesn’t matter how talented, smart or attractive you are. Rejection happens to everyone from time to time.
Even knowing all of that, it’s hard for your self-esteem not to be punched in the gut as a result. Or, in some cases, thrown off of a cliff into a pond full of lava, which just so happens to be be the home of lava-proof piranhas.
In my experience, college is a prime time for self-discovery, major life changes and more rejection than you even know what to do with.
There is nothing worse than busting your ass on an assignment only to receive a grade that doesn’t reflect your effort.
Oh, wait. On second thought, I can think of something worse. It’s when you get turned down for jobs you know you would have rocked at had you only been given a chance. The sting doesn’t lessen when this happens for the same job multiple times.
Not to mention I’m constantly surrounded by amazing, intelligent, talented, beautiful people on a day-to-day basis. It’s hard not to compare yourself to others, especially when rejection is still raw.
Watching people beat you out at opportunities is hard when you know that you’re every bit as smart or capable as they are. Yet the voice in the back of your head is incessantly whispering, “But am I, really?”
It takes every ounce of my self-control not to scream out, “Why? Why am I not seeing any benefit to how hard I’m working? Why am I not good enough? Why does everything come so easily for him/her? Why do I even try?”
There was nothing like repeated rejection to sap the life and motivation right out of me. I’m usually an ambitious person, but there was nothing that made me feel more helpless than to feel my own inner fire extinguish.
If you got this far into my column looking for a magic bullet of advice on how to overcome rejection, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have one. I’m still figuring that out.
I can say this, though. This is easier said than done, but know that there is a point. Someday there will be people who will recognize your potential and see your hard work, and they won’t be dumb enough to pass that up.
This quote from Jason Mraz is also comforting to me, “No doesn’t mean forever. It simply means, ‘Not right now.’ And on the topic of not right now, whatever happened to you in the past is not happening to you now.”
— Whitney Howard is an English major, a junior if you want to get technical. She writes a lot, thinks too much and gets emotional when her dog does cute things. Contact her at whitney.howard@aggiemail.usu.edu or on twitter @omgwhitshutup.