you don’t get to where you wanna be in life by sitting passively in the back corner of the room, waiting for graduate schools, job offers, or internships to approach you. while that would be nice, life doesn’t work that way. at times it can be very difficult, very difficult to keep your chin up, especially when it seems as if everyone around you is getting accepted into ________________. fill in the blank be it, medical school, dental school, high paying internships abroad or renowned graduate programs. and all you seem to be receiving are rejection letters, “We’re sorry to inform you that…” stop reading. right there. you know what follows. and you instantly feel as if someone has hit you, punched you so hard in a spot that you didn’t even know existed. it’s not the heart, not even the mind but some deep place inside that really stops you in your tracks for a moment. depending on your personality a few words of profanity may escape from your lips, you may stare in disbelief, read and re-read the letter/email hoping that perhaps this is a dream, that’s it you are in a nightmare, you’ll open your eyes and it will appear the opposite. but sadly, we all know this not to be the case. friends encourage you, each providing some uplifting words along the lines of it’s not where you were meant to go and it will work out and you will be very successful. and all these things are very sincere and nice but, it still doesn’t change the fact of the big capital letters N-O that fail to recede from your thoughts. ultimately, it is up to you. YOU have to decide how YOU want to deal with it, take the words, use them as fuel for inspiration, for drive. but it is only you that can keep that fire within you alive, you must kindle the hell out of it. it’s easy to forget the failings that occurred by extraordinary people of the past. this is the case because once they do something magnificent, once they make the discovery of their lifetime all the struggles and rejections don’t matter, they are not dwelled upon nor to they linger alongside their success. most of all it is important to know exactly what kind of person you are. though at time, especially hard times you may not display your genuine characteristics, you must know that despite the heartache and headache and any other kind of ache that comes, that you are authentic and you are great. you must know what you want to achieve and know, really know that you can get there. you have to believe in yourself. it is terribly easy to fall into the “I’m stupid/dumb/idiotic/etc and i will never get accepted anywhere” i myself have fallen into it plenty a time following a poor grade on an exam or a series of No’s from graduate schools. it’s here that you either succumb to the them, or you fight against them. so you fight. you get up, brush yourself off, disregard the pain from the punch and you charge, you charge right back. that’s who people want to see, that’s who people pay to see. be that person. look inside. don’t give up.
