I’m no stranger to rejection. Rejection inundated my emails during my senior year of high school, all my dream colleges telling me that I would not be attending their campuses in the fall. Of course, it hurt to not be accepted, and I might’ve shed a tear or two, but I moved on. After all, rejection is redirection, right? If it weren’t for all the rejection emails I received in high school, I would’ve never had the opportunity to attend UC Berkeley and receive a “yes” from them after getting off the waitlist. When one door closes, another is bound to open for you.
What I didn’t realize is that rejection would continue to follow me throughout my time here, and this semester, it’s never been more in my face. Instead of colleges rejecting me, it’s been internships, part-time jobs, and everything in between. Yet, as I continue to tell myself that all these rejections will lead me to something better, with all their apologies and well-wishes about my job and internship searches, with my “impressive” resume and qualifications, just where will this “something better” be?
Whenever I scroll online or talk to my friends who have already graduated, all they lament is how bad the job market is currently. I’ve seen internship search tips that say if I’m not applying to at least 10 internships per day, there’s no hope for me. I’ve seen LinkedIn posts of people celebrating that they’ve finally gotten good news after applying to over a hundred places. Speaking of LinkedIn, every LinkedIn job posting I look at oftentimes already has over a hundred applicants. And as a cherry on top, I feel like every time I check my email, there’s already another rejection email waiting for me to read. The “something better” that I’ve been yearning toward feels like it’s getting increasingly out of reach, but I don’t know what else to do. All I can do is apply more and hope I strike gold.
That’s not to say that I haven’t experienced any successes. I’ve secured interviews for positions, and whether out of delusion or genuine confidence, I believe they’ve gone over well. Yet even with these interviews, I remain stuck in this waiting game, of where and what I’ll end up doing this summer. At the rate I’m going, it feels like I’ll be redirected to nowhere, doing nothing.
Still, despite the odds feeling stacked against me, I remain, thankfully or foolishly, optimistic. It’s all because of my experience with rejection in high school. I remember after getting constant back-to-back rejections, I felt so dejected and defeated, to the point where when I opened my Berkeley portal, I was fully prepared for rejection, only for my heart to feel like it was falling out of my chest when I saw the “Congratulations!” While my internship search is far different from my college applications, I think if I keep applying, keep hoping, one day I can open my email and receive a “Congratulations!” In the end, even if I end up with nothing planned out for the summer, at least all these rejections have made me into someone with tougher skin, ready for the “something better” that might not come this summer, but eventually will arrive.