It's that time of year.
You know. College admissions and rejections.
You are either laughing with joy from the news of your acceptance or crying because you got rejected.
If you didn't get into the college you wanted, it feels as if it's the end of the world, doesn't it? But guess what?
It's not.
You don't know where life is going to take you; who you're going to meet and where you're going to go. Life is full of the unexpected and the unplanned.
I am in a place I never thought I would be but it's still good! I think I could ask my friends the same questions about college, careers and life and they would agree that life does not always unfold the way we think it will but it ends up working out.
In one of my former lives many, many years ago, I was a reporter in Washington, DC who wrote for The Boston Globe. I covered the Massachusetts delegation on Capitol Hill. I worked very hard, learned a lot about how things really work and also had a ton of fun.
Part of that fun was getting to know a group of stellar reporters and writers who were considered to be in a category all by themselves. Their work was untouchable. They were not only great reporters and writers but they were great people outside of work. David Nyhan was one of those guys.
Below is a classic story that Nyhan wrote in 1987 about keeping life and the whole college admissions thing in perspective. And The Boston Globe continues to reprint it all the time because no one can say it any better.
Please read it and you will discover the special way that Nyhan had with words and more importantly, that his words still ring true today.
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| David Nyhan |
Did You Get A College Rejection Letter? Here's Some Sage Advice?
By David Nyhan, Globe Staff
Former Globe columnist the late David Nyhan wrote the following column in
1987. Since then, it has been reprinted in the newspaper and online many times
around this time of year. Nyhan died in January 2005.
THE REJECTIONS arrive this time of year in thin, cheap
envelopes, some with a crummy window for name and address, as if it were a bill,
and none with the thick packet you'd hoped for.
''Dear So-and-so:
''The admissions committee gave full consideration . . . but I regret to
inform you we will be unable to offer you a place in the Class of 2012." Lots of
applicants, limited number of spaces, blah blah blah, good luck with your
undergraduate career. Very truly yours, Assistant Dean Blowhard, rejection
writer, Old Overshoe U.
This is the season of college acceptance letters. So it's also the time of
rejection. You're in or you're out. Today is the day you learn how life is not
like high school. To the Ins, who got where they wanted to go: Congrats, great,
good luck, have a nice life, see you later. The rest of this is for the
Outs.
You sort of felt it was coming. Your SAT scores weren't the greatest. Your
transcript had some holes in it. You wondered what your teachers'
recommendations would really say, or imply. And you can't help thinking about
that essay you finished at 2 o'clock in the morning of the day you absolutely
had to mail in your application, that essay which was, well, a little weird.
Maybe you could have pulled that C in sociology up to a B-minus. Maybe you
shouldn't have quit soccer to get a job to pay for your gas. Maybe it was that
down period during sophomore year when you had mono and didn't talk to your
teachers for three months while you vegged out. What difference does it make
what it was? It still hurts.
It hurts where you feel pain most: inside. It's not like the usual heartache
that kids have, the kind other people can't see. An alcoholic parent, a secret
shame, a gaping wound in the family fabric, these are things one can carry to
school and mask with a grin, a wisecrack, a scowl, a
just-don't-mess-with-me-today attitude.
But everybody knows where you got in and where you didn't. Sure, the letter
comes to the house. But eventually you've still got to face your friends. ''Any
mail for me?" is like asking for a knuckle sandwich. Thanks a lot for the kick
in the teeth. What a bummer.
How do you tell kids at school? That's the hard part. The squeals in the
corridor from the kids who got in someplace desirable. The supercilious puss on
the ones who got early acceptance or the girl whose old man has an in at Old
Ivy.
There's the class doofus who suddenly becomes the first nerd accepted at
Princeton, the 125-pound wrestling jock who, surprise, surprise, got into MIT.
But what about you?
You've heard about special treatment for this category or that category,
alumni kids on a legacy ticket or affirmative action luckouts or rebounders or
oboe players. Maybe they were trying to fill certain slots. But you're not a
slot. You're you. They can look at your grades and weigh your scores and see how
many years you were in French Club. But they can't look into your head, or into
your heart. They can't check out the guts department.
This is the important thing: They didn't reject you. They rejected your
resume. They gave some other kid the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that kid
deserved a break. Don't you deserve a break? Sure. You'll get one. Maybe this is
the reality check you needed. Maybe the school that does take you will be good.
Maybe this is the day you start to grow up.
Look at some people who've accomplished a lot and see where they started.
Ronald Reagan? Eureka College. Jesse Jackson? They wouldn't let him play
quarterback in the Big Ten, so he quit Illinois for North Carolina A & T. Do
you know that the recently retired chairmen and CEOs of both General Motors and
General Electric graduated from UMass? Bob Dole? He went to Washburn Municipal
University.
The former minority leader of the United States Senate, Tom Daschle, went to
South Dakota State. The former speaker of the US House of Representatives, J.
Dennis Hastert, went to Northern Illinois University. Dick Armey, the former
House majority leader, took a bachelor's degree from Jamestown College. Winston
Churchill? He was so slow a learner that they used to write to his mother to
come take this boy off our hands.
I know what you think: Spare me the sympathy. It still hurts. But let's keep
this in perspective. What did Magic Johnson say to the little boy who also
tested HIV positive? ''You've got to have a positive attitude." What happens
when you don't keep a positive attitude? Don't ask.
This college thing? What happened is that you rubbed up against the reality
of big-time, maybe big-name, institutions. Some they pick, some they don't. You
lost. It'll happen again, but let's hope it won't have the awful kick. You'll
get tossed by a girlfriend or boyfriend. You won't get the job or the promotion
you think you deserve. Some disease may pluck you from life's fast lane and pin
you to a bed, a wheelchair, a coffin. That happens.
Bad habits you can change; bad luck is nothing you can do anything about.
Does it mean you're not a good person? People like you, if not your resume.
There's no one else that can be you. Plenty of people think you're special now,
or will think that, once they get to know you. Because you are.
And the admissions department that said no? Screw them. You've got a life to
lead.
