Since school application season is coming to a close, I think this week’s blog entry should be about the art of getting rejected.
That’s right. It’s okay to be rejected from composition competitions, composition schools, summer programs, sports teams, popular clubs, and it’s okay to be the last person selected to be on the kickball team. Just think - at least your mother still loves you.
Since I am almost done with all of my (last) graduate school applications (I have one more, and I’m going to get rejected there), I started asking other colleagues of mine where they have applied. I only applied to four schools (frankly, I only have so much money for application fees), and I was told to my face that I was a chicken for not applying to Juilliard. Eh, so be it. I suppose it is a right of passage to be rejected from Juilliard.
Truthfully, the painful realization that applications cost so much money caused me to narrow down my application pool to four select schools (two are good choices, one is a backup, and the other was my ticket out of the US just in case Barack Obama was not elected president). The fact that I could only afford the application fee for four schools kind of made me sad: it caused my potential pile of rejection letters to shrink.
Why, for the love of God, would I willingly want to be rejected by so many schools? I have one word for you:
SCRAPBOOKING
I remember the time when I got one of my rejection letters from BMI. Yes, BMI, you can crush my spirits, but I’m going to make this rejection letter cool and interesting. I think the scrapbooking paper I used had prints of kids playing soccer (it was on sale). Random? Yes. Therapeutic? Most definitely.
The sad thing is, with the advent of technology and the internet, some schools have figured out how to save money and reject people at the same time. Case in point - Yale School of Music’s rejection letter.
A couple of years ago I applied to Yale. I received an email stating they have made a decision regarding my application. So, with some uneasiness, I clicked on the link. Bam, there was my rejection statement. Now, if I wanted a rejection letter, I could click on another link and print out the rejection letter for my records. Seriously, that was no fun.
All I can think was, “Screw you, Yale, screw you.”