Forehead sweating, hands shaking, heart racing — I remember the feelings well. For me, applying to colleges might have been one of the most stressful experiences of my life.
From the time our guidance counselors started pushing us to plan for secondary education in the sixth grade, I knew three things. One, that I would be going to college. Two, that I would go to college out of state. And three, that I would go to a big school. Tired of being in small town Pennsylvania where everyone knew who I was, I welcomed the change from high school to college even then. By the age of 11, I had nailed down some pretty important specifics about where I wanted to go to school, and nobody could have changed my mind.
Flash forward to junior year of high school, which was the year of a thousand college visits. I think I went on so many campus tours and sat in on so many info sessions that year that my brain started melting. Despite the sheer amount of options I had, however, only one school stood out to me.
This school had my exact major, some of my favorite authors had studied there and it was out of state. I was in love.
My love for the school though, also blinded me to the things that were missing. For one, the student body was about 1,900 (which was not much bigger than my high school). There also wasn’t much of an athletic department, and the location, although out of state, would have been freezing cold for almost half the year.
Despite the MAJOR flaws that this school clearly had, my heart was set, and nowhere else would do. When the time came, I applied as an Early Decision Undergraduate Student in November, and waited until December to get my decision.
December 15 was the day everything changed. As I silently hoped for the best and prepared for the worst, I logged into my application portal with enough anxiety to last a lifetime. I typed in my credentials, hit enter and then found everything I thought I knew crashing down around me.
After years of studying, working hard and making my applications come to life, my work, it seemed, was all for nothing. I didn’t get into the school of my dreams, and I had to start the application process all over again.
This rejection simultaneously changed everything and nothing for me. I still planned on going to college. I still planned on going out of state. I just hadn’t planned on not getting into the school I so desperately wanted to attend. Through all of this, however, I learned how to adapt my plans, how to smile in the face of rejection and how to move on.
I took the shock of the rejection in, and then began my college search all over again. I worked harder on my applications than ever before, talked with as many teachers as possible to polish my essays and eventually got into a school I never would have considered without having been rejected.
Our reactions to moments like these define who we are as people. In the face of rejection and disappointment, we can either get back up and try again, or we can shut down. I chose the former, and ended up somewhere that, looking back, I can’t imagine not being a part of my life: Virginia Tech. Now, entering my sophomore year, I cannot imagine going to school anywhere else. At Virginia Tech, I have found friends, family and, most importantly, a homeーand I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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