COLLEGE LIFEADMISSIONS Admissions 107:
Mastering Rejection
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egardless (aardvarkisrael.com). of how Or you can travel smart, hardto Jewish communiworking, ties around the world or talented (kivunim.org), as we are, every one of did Suzy Lee Weiss, us faces rejection at one the most famous time or another. What young Jewish college matters is how we reject of 2013, as deal with it. featured on the Today If you didn’t get Show. Being proacinto your first choice tive will make you school—and maybe a stronger candidate not your second or and prove—to yourBETTER TO FACE REJECTION HEAD-ON. third either—it’s okay self and others— to spend some time feeling a bit low. that you are the kind of person who is It happened to me. I cried in my willing to put in the work to achieve history classroom after I was “denied” your goals. by my first and second choice schools. When you’re ready, reapply either My teacher, Mr. Sokolow, offered after a gap year or as a transfer student some wisdom that has remained with both to the schools that rejected you me ever since: “Do the best you can and those you might not have considwith what you have.” ered the first time around. Recently I found out that he was You may still get rejected. What you quoting the former world heavyweight also need to know is that a rejection boxing champion Joe Louis. Boxers letter is not a judgment of your worth. know that going into the ring means I learned that lesson the hard way they’re going to have to take some in my 20s. Wanting to publish fiction, blows. Painful as it may be, that is what I sent a story to the venerable New we often have to do to achieve our most Yorker magazine. When I received a cherished goals in life. standard rejection letter, I concluded So, if you don’t get into your top that I wasn’t a good writer. I didn’t choice schools, don’t give up. Do what know then that most New Yorker stories you can to improve your chances. are submitted by literary agents—very, Take a summer school course to very few are taken from their “slush show that you really can get an A in pile” of blind submissions—and that Biology. Secure a summer internship many other magazines publish stories in your area of interest and have a by unknown writers who do not have mentor write about your abilities. Con- agents. I’m embarrassed to say that for sider going on a gap year program— 10 years, I wrote stories but did not many of them offer scholarships. You submit them anywhere for fear of can experience an Israel program rejection. Finally, while taking writing organized by the Reform Movement classes, I met other writers who helped such as Netzer Year (netzeryear.org), me understand that a rejection letter or a “secular yeshiva” where you can from The New Yorker was not a rejecstudy Jewish texts without being oblition of me or my work, but a reality gated to partake in religious obsercheck—countless talented writers are vance. You can learn and do volunteer vying for a few spots in the nation’s top work in Israel in a pluralistic setting magazines. Even now, after having had fall 2014
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