Why didn’t anyone tell me the doors would still close?
Reflecting on rejection after acceptance
I opened the acceptance letter in my MIT portal at 6:40 p.m. on Dec. 17 last year, and I was overcome with rapture — with the delight of knowing that around a year from now, my life would look so different. I knew that I’d be hanging out with some cool people (currently am!), doing weird shit together on a daily basis, possibly even suffering and in anguish while we do our psets and study for tests. But I also hoped that I’d finally be free to pursue any opportunity I wanted at the so-called #1 university in the world. I never had the chance to do much at my tiny rural high school in Maine. Now, I could finally get the leadership and business experience I’d always wanted by joining a few clubs! I could learn how to act or play the electric guitar and get the chance to perform in front of a large audience! Or perhaps I’d be managing competitions, learning how to engage in mock trials. Perhaps this… perhaps that… I was so excited — daydreaming, even — that I could finally live a life more unbounded than the one I had lived in high school.
But why didn’t anyone tell me, even after I’d managed to do the impossible and enter the big doors of MIT, that the doors inside would still slam in my face?
A couple weeks ago I auditioned for MIT Live and Mock Trial, interviewed for Student Events Board and a couple of other clubs, and submitted a lot of applications for organizations that interested me. I ended up getting rejected by most of them — no shade to the clubs that I mentioned. Maybe my rendition of “My Kind of Woman” by Mac Demarco on an acoustic guitar was… listenable at best. Still, was it really my fault that I thought college would be a lot more liberating?
Surely we’re not just a school full of insanely cracked Nobel Prize-winning students, right? Not all of us are the second coming of Kurt Cobain, Steve Jobs, or Warren Buffett. Some of us placed internationally in high school academic olympiads, but some of us are still dreaming about passing an 18.02 midterm. We’re not expected to know everything off the bat; in fact, from the vibes of MIT’s application, we’re just expected to be students who have initiative and have no qualms taking an opportunity and running with it as fast as they can. Yet sometimes, it’s almost as if you NEED to have done an insane amount of things to get opportunities. In other words, you need experience to get experience. Maybe life is that way — like a stairway, you have to climb to build your experience from one opportunity to the next.
With the amount of doors closing on me — and no doubt, everyone else’s — it’s a little hard not to develop impostor syndrome. Seeing your friends do cool shit and UROP and attend lavish frat parties and participate in selective business clubs and perform in front of audiences while you just… sit there, doing your psets and daydreaming of a better life like you have been since December of last year. I’m pensive about the fact that I’ve finally passed the “hardest” door to get through — the big door to MIT — only to still fail to enter the rooms inside.
I’m not writing this to complain. Not at all. I’m writing this to tell you this, my dear readers: if you’re going through the same thing — if you’re doubting yourself because you’ve been rejected by countless clubs and organizations — you’re definitely, definitely not alone. In fact, I’m a little surprised this isn’t talked about more.
And I’m glad to say that, now, I am in a lot of clubs and organizations that have thankfully accepted me. In fact, I’m quite glad that The Tech doesn’t have the cutthroat process of joining Harvard’s Crimson! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this.
Two things to end this on a more positive note. One, please take care of yourself. Don’t be cruel to the person that got you here in the first place — you. That you that, no doubt, fought tooth and nail to crack open the big doors to MIT, whether you expected it or not. Be grateful to yourself that you made it here, and don’t forget your worth when things don’t go your way. And two: perhaps the greatest thing about college is that even if some doors close on you, most will open for anyone, no prior knowledge and experience needed. For now, a Thursday afternoon could look like practicing the guitar, fire spinning, playing poker, or sailing and watching the sun fall below the horizon in pure satisfaction as another busy day ends. For now, joining the business organizations, the frats, the sororities, the acapella groups, and the countless other clubs can wait. They’re not doors closed forever. And, within the next four years, who knows? Anything can happen.
There’s beauty in being at such a large, diverse, and busy place. There’s always stuff to do, anywhere, anytime. In a place as vast as this, there are always doors open for you.
You just have to look for them.