I remember, after months of hard work and high hopes, being rejected from Oxford. After five of my friends had achieved offers that day, I expected the same; but I received three rejections: one on UCAS, the next via email, and the next in a letter just after I got home to sleep it off. My mental health took a big hit from the academic disappointment – all of the hopes I had from years of preparation had culminated, ultimately, in rejection.
Disappointment in academics is something which I think is taken very personally. I convinced myself that I just was not good enough, and that it was never going to happen. Using this way of thinking, it would have taken weeks, maybe even months, to move on. Everyone I have talked to about academic disappointment has said the same: they felt like they were not good enough, and this sentiment lingers if we allow it to. Such feelings are not invalid, and when we face such a harsh rejection we are not used to are natural. But the most important thing I learned is that this type of disappointment is a way of helping us to grow, and learn, and face whatever trials we may move on to as stronger and more resilient individuals.
The successes and failures in academia are clearly linked, in many of our cases, to our perceptions of ourselves. My rejection made me feel like a failure, or a disappointment. But I moved on by turning the experience into a positive, and now I feel stronger as a result. I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, and if things do not work out then there is something much better waiting for us. I now not only am hardly phased by rejections, but know that they are the most important learning curves we will face.
Through disappointments, we grow. We learn. We gain a sense of how we can improve for that next challenge along the way, which is probably better than the Plan A we were hoping for. The thing is, is that, as cliché as it may sound, they are not rejections we face, but new directions. If the original path we walk down is blocked, then we have opportunities to divert to arrive at the same destination.
Things work out in the end. Believe in yourself. You are good enough.
---- Kieran Barry, Guest Blogger
