I was sitting at a table in my school’s cafeteria being interviewed by a woman from a local bank. I wasn’t looking for a job. This was a class assignment, the traditional “junior interview” – a practice job interview built into every eleventh grade English class. My interview was running smoothly until she asked her final question. She wanted to know when I had failed and how I had handled failure. I was stumped. At that point in my life, I had never failed at anything. I’d made every team I had ever tried out for, had won school elections, attended a summer neuroscience class at Stanford and received a glowing review from my professor, gone to Harvard’s summer school and earned A’s in both my classes, and carried a 4.0 at my high school. But I couldn’t tell her I’d never failed. I didn’t want to be that girl. So I embellished a story about not doing so well on a test and said next time I had studied more. It was a weak response.
As the year continued, so did my success. I landed a spot in a competitive internship at the National Cancer Institute, was elected president of my senior class, and aced my SATs. Failure was my biggest fear, but I had never had to face it.
I chose to apply to eight colleges: one safety school, and seven Ivies or Ivy equivalents. I never expected to be accepted everywhere – that was a ridiculous idea. So I set my goal to three overall acceptances. I would be over the moon if that happened.
The stress of the application period followed by months of endless waiting was agonizing. Constantly unable to sleep at night, I prayed God would put me at the school where I was meant to be. But the stress of waiting for unknown and mysterious panels of admissions officers to decide my future still kept me awake.
Within a 36 hour period at the end of March I heard from each school. Of the seven reach schools, my result read: deferred then rejected, wait listed, rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected. I had only been accepted to my safety school. I had always known rejection letters were coming, but I had never considered there would be so many. I honestly believed one school would say yes. Never had I felt so worthless. Academic success had been my main source of self-identity, and in just 36 hours, it had all been taken away from me. My past achievements no longer held any meaning.
In the week following my rejections, my entire outlook changed. I learned that of the schools I had applied to, only the one that accepted me would allow me to major in finance, minor in international business, be pre-med, and study abroad (I want to work for international pharmaceutical companies). I would have had to compromise at the other schools. And even though it hadn’t been the exact answer I was looking for, my prayers had been heard. It had been made quite clear to me where I was supposed to spend the next four years of my life.
In this realization, I found peace. Gone were the sleepless nights, the constant need to research admissions statistics and weigh my odds. I have, without a doubt, experienced failure. But in facing my greatest fear, I learned that everything happens for a reason. And there is nothing that can put my soul more at peace than knowing that failure isn’t a setback, but a push in the right direction.