Not long ago, I applied to a grad program that I just knew was perfect for me. I spent days on the application, had other people invested in the process, etc. I prayed over my application before I sent it in and just hoped for the best. Weeks later, after an interview and days of just waiting to hear back, I was waitlisted. I spent the whole summer at the top of the waitlist just waiting for someone to drop so I could take their spot. I wanted to be in that program so badly that I’d waited and hoped literally until the first day of classes that someone would decide they weren’t going to continue. Although it was beginning to become obvious that I wouldn’t be starting graduate school in the Fall, I still had a hard time accepting that I’d been rejected from the one thing that I just knew had been a perfect fit for me. On top of that, it’d always really been my plan to go to school in the Fall. A gap year sounded nice when it meant that I’d be able to travel the world or work in my field and gain experience, a.k.a. have been productive, but that dream was sort of shattered once the pandemic hit. I didn’t know how it would affect any of that so by March, I had my heart set on going to school.

Looking for a job in the midst of a pandemic has not been the most exciting experience. To sum it up, it’s been a lot of time on a lot of applications that result in a lot of, “Unfortunately, we’ve decided to head in a different direction” emails. With spending time on social media and talking to my peers about the way all these rejections were making me feel, I realized that I am not the only one. Not only are we in a pandemic, we are in an economic crisis where a job isn’t so easy to come by. The other day, I applied for a job that I really felt would be a good fit. Although I haven’t heard back from them, I was thinking- “It would be a shame for me to spend as much time as I did, putting this application together and them rejecting me.” Granted, I did spend a hefty amount of time on the application, but I bet that if I actually get the job, or an interview, I’d have a completely different outlook on the time that I spent preparing that application. That is where the thoughts on my grad school application process came in. The way my thinking was set up, I’d spent months putting together a top tier application for a program that essentially did not want me. What was really going on was, I was advocating for myself and for a spot, being vulnerable and shining the spotlight on myself. I realized that that’s something we’ll always have to do in the adult world. Nothing is just going to be handed to us. We have to work for opportunities, even if some of them never come.

What we have to understand about rejection is that it is not meant to break us down. It is meant to build us up- the no’s that we receive, whether we were qualified for something or not, are the obstacles we get over and get through to reach our ultimate goal. A lot of times, we are under the assumption that we order our own steps and don’t give God the room to do what He does. After a certain amount of no’s, you have a few things under your belt that not everyone has. The first thing you have, is the experience that comes with your process. In most cases, you know what to do- you know how to stand out, you know how to be better, because you’ve learned from your past mistakes. Spending time doing grad school applications this year has not been easy, but it’s been a smoother process because I am applying the knowledge I learned during my last application process, to this one. The second thing you get from rejection, is protection. Only God knows who and where you’d be if He had not intervened and stopped you from going down a road you felt like was on your path. When I think of where I am now and where I thought I wanted to be, I can’t help but be grateful that God’s plans prevailed over mine. The third thing I believe you get from rejection is faith. Not necessarily faith that you’ll get the job or maybe even the relationship this time, but faith that God has got you no matter what. At that point, when you take everything in your past into consideration, you realize that you don’t have anything to lose. A no cannot hurt you anymore because you know that God’s provision is consistent along with His presence.