About a year ago, I was getting ready to submit my application for Grand Canyon University's prestigious nursing program. I was as nervous as ever; thrown into a nail-biting, excessive leg shaking anxiety that would carry on for a whole two months' worth of waiting.
Finally, the day came that I would receive an email from Dr. Lisa Smith. It was October 15th, and I was at a Safeway in Flagstaff stocking product. My part-time job titles me as a food distributor for a small, family-owned company called Mountain Man Nut and Fruit, allowing me to travel between various Safeway and Albertsons stores across the state. I had made the long drive from Phoenix to Flagstaff the previous day, stopping in Sedona to service another Safeway. Pine Nuts were getting close to being out of code, which in simpler terms means the selling time frame was coming to an end so it was time to check up on all the stores in the area that I hadn't been to in a while. I used this as an excuse to both take a mini road trip and to visit my boyfriend in Flagstaff.
I had gone between checking the dates on the Pine Nuts and other products and refreshing my student email all morning, simply waiting for the email. Am I going to be accepted? It's almost 11 in the morning, haven't they sent it out yet? My heart leaped at every text message and notification I received until, after refreshing my inbox hundreds of times, the email came.
My eyes darted everywhere on the page, leaping from "Dear Adrienne" to "carefully reviewed" to "Bachelor of Science in Nursing Pre-Licensure program" to "We regret to inform you that your application has not been accepted". I've been rejected?
I can tell you now that at that moment, I wanted to feel like time stopped, that I could hear someone drop their quarters from across the store or the crinkle of a bag of Ruffles being picked up to be put into a cart of some college student that goes to Northern Arizona University that had the munchies. Funnily enough, that's not how I felt at all.
Upon hearing unpleasant news, humans have at least three initial reactions. The first reaction is to cry, the second is to be fueled with rage, and the third is to be at a complete loss of words, mine being the latter. Despite not knowing what to say, my mind raced with thoughts by the second: What am I going to tell my mom? What am I going to do for classes next semester? Were my grades and scores really not enough? I was lost and felt lost for what felt like an eternity, but the feeling had only lasted a mere week.
It's crazy how plans can go awry at any second: being late, being ill-prepared, and, in this case, being rejected forces the planners to deviate from what they laid before them and come up with something else entirely. Because I had finished all of my nursing prerequisites, I had no real plans other than studying in the nursing program and graduating in the spring of 2019. My whole world needed to shift and major decisions would need to be made. At first glance, I would either have to take up a minor or take the semester off. Not wanting to take the semester off, I decided to really look at my options.
Throughout elementary school and high school, I had written everything from short stories and poems to sports articles and memoirs. I loved writing because it gave me an outlet to really express myself in a way that could touch the emotions of other people. I preyed a lot on being relatable because, for me, I find to hold works that I can relate to more endearing than something that I can't relate to. Writing was something I had wanted to pursue for a long time, but I had deviated from the path due to my parents wanting me to pursue a career with more stability, like nursing. Now that nursing was no longer a viable option for me, it dawned on me that I could finally pursue writing and that maybe being rejected by the nursing program was a blessing in disguise.
At first, I was skeptical about changing my major. Changing your major can be somewhat consequential because you'd be starting from scratch. Sometimes it entails having to take more classes, increasing the time you spend getting your degree, and generally going in a different direction than the one you first took. Luckily for me, all of my nursing credits transferred over to my new major as open-elective credits and ultimately helped keep me on track for my plan to graduate in the spring of 2019. This change, although bittersweet, made me feel as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
Fast-forward to the present time, I feel so blessed to be pursuing my bachelor's degree in English with an Emphasis in Professional Writing. I've loved intermingling with other English majors and being able to delve into my craft. It's truly funny to me how we can get so worked up over things not going the way we want or expect them to, yet they always manage to work themselves out in the end.
