As I'm sitting here studying for my last few finals and packing up my little dorm room, I've gotten into the thoughts surrounding what journey I'm about to embark on. Aug. 8, 2016, I will be packing up my room at home and all of my things and moving to Florida to participate in the Disney College program. I could not be more excited for the opportunity, however, there were many events prior being accepted into the program that pushed me around and made me question myself more than just a few times.
At the beginning of this school year, my first year in college, my one goal was to put myself out there and get involved in something. The first thing I thought I would try was to become a part of a sorority because I had heard about Greek life here at my school and I thought that it was something I would want to be a part of. I participated in fall formal recruitment at my school that started in September. I got through the first two days, meeting all of the sororities and ranking them in the order that I liked them. I made it to the third and fourth days and got invited back to two houses for sisterhood rounds. After that though, at 6 a.m. the next morning, I got the call that I hadn't been invited back to any of the houses for Preference Night and that was the end of my sorority road. I was kind of hurt and upset that I had been rejected because it seemed like everything came so easy in high school and now college was tearing me down.
Fast forward a few months when I decided to attempt to become a part of the Student Ambassadors. This the group of students who give tours, put on special events, and is the voice of the school. There were socials that we had to attend where we played icebreaker games, and they took our pictures to remember who we were. We also had our interviews which involved sitting in front of three panels of five to six current Ambassadors and getting drilled with questions: some serious and some funny. Needless to say, I didn't get past the interviews and there I was again, at the same point I was beforehand: another rejection.
A few months later, I decided to apply for the Disney College Program. I didn't think I was going to get accepted and when I got past the web-based interview, I was ecstatic. Next came the phone interview and after I was done with that, I honestly had no confidence that I would get accepted. No other organization wanted me, so why would a Fortune 500 company want me? However, when I got that acceptance email two days later after my phone interview, where most people waited weeks and months for theirs, I knew I had finally found what I had meant to do all along.
If I had gotten accepted into any of the organizations I got rejected from, it would have been harder to leave school and honestly, I don't think that I would have thought of applying for the sheer fact that I wouldn't have wanted to leave this "family" I was a part of. I didn't realize it at the time, but all of those rejections had a purpose: to make sure I got where I was supposed to be going. Things are tough when you get rejected and it sucks more than anything in the world, but those are the times that teach you to be strong and everything is always for a reason.
Rejection taught me that things happen for a reason, that some things don't work out so that other things can fall into place, and that eventually you'll end up being where you are supposed to be no matter what road you take to get there.
