Sunglasses Inside and Bling on Their Jeans

...&...

Rejection. It sucks, none of us like it. I work hard and am admittedly a bit of a perfectionist so when I face rejection I tend to fixate on it. I'm in the process of applying to medical school and the application process has required me to face rejection more than I'm used to.

Recently I was rejected from the University of Arizona Medical School. Naturally, I was disappointed. When I related those feelings to my friend Max he promptly responded with something along the lines of, "Who cares, you're better off. Those people wear sunglasses inside and bling on their jeans anyway." I laughed, remembered why I love Max, and feeling better, went along my merry way.

More recently I was rejected from the University of Washington. As this was a school I had actually interviewed with, I was a little shaken resulting in what I like to call my "mid-application crisis" in which I spent about 2.53 days wondering if medical school was really what I wanted, or worth the effort, and began frantically wishing I would have studied something less frightening like Elementary Ed (those cute kids!) or Interior Design (i love HGTV). I talked with a friend about my little crisis and she assured me U of Washington just "wasn't meant to be."

Taking a step back from the apps, I had a little dose of rejection in the dating game recently as well. To be fair I can't exactly call it rejection as the end of our little dating adventure was fairly mutual- he and I are just NOT compatible. Even so, I admit my ego was a little bruised. Logan being the small college town that it is, my roommate also dated this guy last year and I dealt with these feelings of rejection by laughing with her about what a tool he is. To be honest, it is true that he has some douchey qualities, but in reality he also has some really good qualities that I was genuinely attracted to and even if things didn't work out I still respect him as an individual. So why then was I making fun?

We all make excuses and adjust our perceptions to deal with rejection. "People in Arizona have bling on their jeans." "Washington just wasn't meant to be." "He was a tool anyway." Statements like these make us feel better, make rejection go down a little easier, but in thinking about it, I'm not so sure that is how I'd like to see things. Projecting our rejection onto something or someone else prevents us from taking away the lessons that we could have learned from dealing with that rejection in the first place. Arizona would have been fun, but it was the first year they were considering accepting non-residents so chances were slim. Washington is a great school, but I wasn't as prepared for my interview as I should have been. We weren't compatible, but I was not as assertive, communicative, or maybe understanding as I could have been either.

Rejection. It's a tough pill to swallow, but I prefer to take my dose.