This article was originally published in Issue 8 of the 2021-22 school year by former adviser Rachel Decker.

I follow the Instagram account @grieftolight (you should too!), a collection of incredible poems, not all, but many, about grief, heartache, tough stuff. Today’s was called “Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and the second stanza was the catalyst I needed to start writing this article:

“Six billion tons sounds impossible

until I consider how it is to swallow grief–

just a teaspoon and one might as well have consumed

a neutron star. How dense it is,

how it carries inside it the memory of collapse.

How difficult it is to move then.

How impossible to believe that anything

could lift that weight.”

I’ve wanted to write this column for a while, but everything I wrote in my head sounded placating, or preachy, or some other terrible emotion starting with the letter p. This school year, I’m noticing that rejection, specifically from college and future decisions, has been ravaging students. I’ve actually banned all mention of college from the newsroom because conversations have become so toxic, stressful, vapid and cruel; frankly, it’s been heartbreakingly disappointing to hear kids I’ve known for four years say the things they’re saying, both about others and themselves. 

Rejection, of any kind, is one of those deeply painful feelings and emotions no one ever really teaches you how to deal with. That’s partially because as a society, Americans will literally do anything to avoid feeling painful emotions. As Brene Brown so eloquently postulates, “We live in a culture that only wants to talk about what’s going well. Anything that’s not going well is positioned as a detour from the main road.” 

It’s also because there isn’t a formula or set of tricks or rules for rejection. There is no panacea. There is just living in it, embracing the feelings, asking for support, dealing with it and moving on. There is also the maddening fact that in retrospect, you will be grateful for that rejection. But while experiencing it, this rejection, particularly one of such magnitude, can feel like the end of your immediate world and the future beyond it. 

I said last year that it’s okay not to be okay and I still stand by it. Rejection, especially college rejection, does feel like consuming a neutron star. You have worked your entire life for this possibility, a hopeful goal, that seemingly vanishes with a single, curt, impersonal email. You want to know WHY. You want to know how. You want to know why you got that rejection and the person sitting next to you, who seems just like you, got the OTHER email. You start questioning if maybe you’d scored 50 points higher on your SAT, or taken one more AP class, spiraling down the rabbit hole of what ifs and whys, the end result might have been different. You don’t know what you will do next, now that your intended plan is no longer an option. And it does feel crushing, the rush of six billion tons of pain, heartache, agony, disappointment, frustration, loss, numbness, a kind of static you are slow-motion moving through. 

I wrote a college op a few years back about the college application process, including my own college rejections, and you should probably go read it … like now. But here’s another take on rejection. 

If I had to make a life graph of rejections and disappointments vs. success, it would look like the most terrifying roller coaster you’ve ever been on. I regret a few things in life (like not studying abroad in college; please, go study in some fantastic place!) but I can honestly tell you I do not regret the rejection I have experienced. I do not wish it turned out differently. In fact – and I mean this with all sincerity – I have honestly come to be (mostly) grateful. The reason why is wrapped up in my loose theories on rejection. I’m old, but not that old, and occasionally wise, so take this all with a grain of salt (maybe this is where I lose you, but here goes).

Sometimes, I’ve faced rejection because it wasn’t the right time, nor was I actually ready for what I thought I wanted. This has been true for many jobs I was consequently rejected from, as well as many other personal matters. Last year, I was in the running for a higher-level position that I really wanted. I’d made it through MULTIPLE rounds, I knew I was qualified, and I knew I would kill it at that job. But they selected the other candidate and not me. That felt personal. That was not even me out of a thousand or even 10. A year later, I can honestly say I wasn’t ready for that particular experience, mostly because of the year I’ve had. I needed to be in an established, safe community of familiar and trusting people this year, not starting something new in an unfamiliar place. I believe we have to trust that there is a larger plan out of our control, and life is very much about the intersection of timing, change and luck. 

(And if you don’t believe me, maybe you want to believe this random person on the internet, who, 10 years later, actually thanked the people who humiliated and fired them, despite their initial despair and anguish: “Thank you: You did for me what I never had the courage to do myself; you destroyed a life that I was building for someone else, so that I could finally begin to build a life for me.”)

Sometimes, I’ve faced rejection because I deserved better and didn’t know what better was. This is mostly true personally, where I was accepting less than I deserved. These were people I thought would be lifelong friends or future partners, and could not POSSIBLY BELIEVE a world without them existed. But their rejection, small or all-consuming, led to new relationships where people treated me with the kind of respect, compassion, and genuine care that I deserved as a human; they also appreciated my genuine compassion and empathy and reciprocated that. I very rarely miss these people; I miss more so the possibility of what they could have offered me (but weren’t actually). I believe we have to trust that rejection is actually just a redirection to better.  

Sometimes, I’ve faced rejection because it was not something that was serving me, but I was so trapped in my own thoughts I couldn’t see that. The year before coming to Dougherty was the worst year of my teaching career at a school that was almost abusive and dangerous (a kid once said to me: “We’ll see if you’re here tomorrow” – he meant he was going to slash my car tires; I thought he was talking about my life). Because I was new, I was given an extremely challenging set of classes, and I worked hard to prove myself and hopefully teach a lighter load for the next year, which I was finally granted. But just before the next year started, they hired someone entirely new to teach that lighter load and gave me back the same soul-sucking, challenging schedule. When I asked them about loyalty and hard work, they told me that didn’t matter. When I told them that I would find a new position if this was my teaching placement, they said, “Good luck.” In that moment, I couldn’t believe how badly I’d been betrayed and rejected.  Reflecting back, I now feel like this was probably some larger spiritual force shouting GET.OUT.OF.THIS.PLACE. In that moment, I didn’t know what I would do and seriously considered quitting teaching. Reflecting back, I can see that this was not only NOT a place for me to grow, but was actually hindering my growth. I am so grateful for that rejection; for one, it led me to Dougherty, which has helped me grow instrumentally as a teacher, leader and person. I believe that what we want is not always the same as what is best for us. 

Sometimes, I’ve faced rejection because there was a lesson I hadn’t learned yet (or needed to re-learn yet again … sigh), some value or knowledge to be gained from the actual experience of rejection. The other half to that Brene Brown quote is this truth: “Pain is not a detour from the main road. Pain is a part of the road we walk as human beings.” We don’t actually often learn the most from success and happiness and glory. We learn from mistakes, when we get knocked down, when we know what pain tangibly feels like. It’s largely because that gives us a kind of perspective, a kind of empathy, you can’t learn otherwise and can’t be taught; it has to be felt, and it often can’t be felt unless we’ve been put in a situation where something is taken from us. I believe what the great John Green says, in the words of Peter Van Houten: “pain demands to be felt,” and is the most helpful teacher. 

And sometimes, I have faced rejection I can’t explain my way out of, where there is no rhyme or reason. Sometimes life is miserably unfair, unforgiving, terrible, tragic. Personally, 2021 was absolutely the most painful year of my life and I’m still trying to make sense of it all; it chewed me up and spit me out and taught me a new definition of rejection and pain. I cannot explain to you why people are taken from us, why everyone has suffered through and from a pandemic, the current tragedies of Ukraine and other war-destroyed cities, why kids get terminal diseases, why our hearts are broken. There are some things that are just unexplainable and utterly heartbreaking and HARD. Life is mostly suffering, interrupted with beautiful moments of wondering, discovery, bursts of happy accidents and sunrises, the waves crashing on a beach, a perfect night, laughing until your whole face hurts and a bunch of other random bright spots. Life is not pain-free; you can’t go through life expecting, demanding, feeling like you are owed happiness and the rights to everything you want. In fact, I don’t ascribe anymore to the philosophy that life is about “how to be happy”. Arthur C. Brooks of the Atlantic, who is far wiser and smarter than I am, has been writing a series of fascinating articles about how people are basically foolishly chasing after a “happiness” and missing out on, well, living. I believe that sometimes rejection is just rejection, and that is something we have to live with, no matter how painful. 

Being rejected from college is a complete suckfest. There are multiple layers to the rejection, especially experiencing that rejection while attending a school like Dougherty. I absolutely understand that. The purpose of this article is to help you see that this is not the end. I highly anticipate that at some point next year, wherever you are, you will realize, “Wow, I’m glad I’m in this exact place right now … and not where I THOUGHT I was supposed to be.” Then again, maybe you will be miserable and you can get your money back from reading this, but I guarantee you that in either situation, you will have learned or gained some important piece of knowledge or a life skill, or will be better equipped to deal with the next rejection that comes your way. 

I have a few requests, if you’ve made it thus far. Please go easier on yourself. I personally feel like in 2022, getting into college in this country (especially our state system) has become akin to winning a local lottery, a system that needs to dramatically be reevaluated and redesigned. Celebrate whatever your plans are for next year, while also embracing your rejections – both are leading you into the next phase of your life where you are prepared to face the next level of challenges, because they will be harder. 

Please stop bringing other people down about their celebrations or rejections, either to their face, on social media, or behind their back (the grossest of all offenses). The kinds of disparaging and demeaning comments I’ve heard that have attacked character and values and ethics make me sick and just aren’t okay. Remember that those people too have faced rejection; we all do. We all have feelings that should be validated and supported, but that doesn’t give us the right to treat others badly. As Wahtola Trommer says in the final stanza of “Watching My Friend Pretend Her Heart Isn’t Breaking”:

“There are many reasons to treat each other

with great tenderness. One is

the sheer miracle that we are here together

on a planet surrounded by dying stars.

One is that we cannot see what, 

anyone else has swallowed.”

We’ve all swallowed a great deal of rejection, challenges, heartache, grief, frustration, stress and more. Let’s turn that into wisdom that propels us forward, and empathy and compassion that supports others in their journeys too. 

Finally, please, no matter the rejection, keep going, no matter how impossible it feels. I think rejection often seems so final, so permanent, so all-consuming. But it doesn’t have to be. It is often the persistence that we remember and gain the most from. For the past two years, I have shown my AP Literature students this “Queen’s Gambit” tweet, which explained that it took 30 years and nine rewrites and a hundred thousand rejections, but eventually that show was viewed by 62 million people. This is one of countless examples. We often see rejection as an ending. I encourage you to consider it a beginning. It may not be the door you thought you were meant to walk through, but it is an opening. 

I’ll leave you with this. In a beautiful moment during the hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court judicial appointment, one senator asked her what advice she would give young people. She explained that during her first year at college, confused, feeling out of place and rejected from what was supposed to be full of hope and possibility, a random stranger saw her, noticed her struggle, and said this: “Persevere.” 

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