Around this time last year, I was quite disappointed in myself. Actually, scratch that. I was devastated. Crushed beyond belief. To some, this was probably when you found out that the college or university of your dreams saw some potential in you that you were not even certain you composed of and offered you an admission. But for others, this dream of yours only ever remained a dream. You were one of two people, either you were at your peak of happiness or you were stuck in the depths of sadness. The beauty of the wonderful season of college decisions, am I right?

Rejection hurts. I would know, I experienced it five times. Each time creating a larger crater on my confidence and ego. I can still name the five colleges that ripped my heart out and stomped on it, and I am pretty sure I will remember them until the day I die. Sure, I got into colleges, but of course, I have a greater hold on my memories of failure than those of success.

I am not going to say that everything happens for a reason or that it’s all going to okay. Because I don’t know about you, but that sure as hell was not what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear was that someone messed up. It was a mistake.

Of course I had gotten in, how could I have not? Not to mention, to only make matters worse, people around you are getting into the school of their dreams and here you are, feeling like a complete failure. You just can’t help but begin to wonder how that other person got into your school when you didn’t. What did they have that I don’t?

I’ll admit, you need time to wallow in sadness and defeat because the fact of the matter is, you did invest time and effort into trying to reach a goal, even though in the end, it was not enough to achieve it. And that’s okay, but you have to accept it and move on. Sure, you could spend the rest of your life speculating what you did wrong and what you could have done better, but what are you going to get out of doing that?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

There is no reason to sugar coat it because even being blunt about how rejection feels will still be an understatement compared to the actual feeling. It is going to suck. It really is. But the thing is, stuff really does happen for a reason. You may not realize it now, but there may be an underlying silver lining to it all. And if you can’t find one, then you aren’t looking for one hard enough because everything has a positive side to it. I can genuinely say that I am very happy where I am right now. It took time, but you’ll feel this way too, just give it time.

And if not, there’s always grad school.