Comments

Yeah,Kelsey! You go, girl!! I'm so very happy for you and what a great choice you've made! I hope you love UBC as much as I did (I spent 8 years there, not counting the three years prior to that I worked there as a full-time research assistant!) It's big and competitive school, but there are so many programs to choose from and so many brilliant people (prof, undergrad and grad students) to work with. Make sure you get yourself familiar with the student bodies early on and you'll settle in a lot sooner. It'll be a beautiful life ahead of you. Enjoy! Oh Kelsey, you're such a tease, titling your blog "the decision" and then spinning a long, suspenseful tale. Congratulations on your decision and on rising to all your challenges. Congratulations, Kelsey, on getting into all three schools and on making what I'm sure is a wise decision. I'm very happy for and proud of you, and I hope your college experience will be great. Greetings,
congratulations.
Now would everybody please spare a thought for the poor three institutes that are terrified of being rejected by Kelsey...
Cheers,
Buri Always hope for the best! Although sometimes the result might be devastating but overall it's better to be optimistic:D Dear Kelsey-

Thank you for writing and congratulations!!! Knowing rejection quite well (not needing to get into that here), you're right, one can either wallow in self-pity or use the energy to reach a new horizon.

Mind you, while I'm still reaching for that horizon, I'm still getting rejections. Go figure - invited to yet another competition, but rejected by the organization from which I applied for a grant...

It would be very interesting to really hear people talk about all of this - how to use rejection to one's advantage.

CONGRATULATIONS AGAIN!

Sam

See you at school. :-) Man, that took guts! Way to go! Kelsey, sincere congratulations!

Neil

Congratulations Kelsey!! After college I was rejected by almost every airline I applied to as a pilot. The funniest was United. They gave me three psychological tests that, as a Psych major doing graduate work, had been grading for two years. I knew all the answers. Hee hee. I received a rejection letter, that I still have framed, that said, "on the basis of our psychological exams we feel you would not be happy in an aviation career, thank you for your interest in United." Go figure. On the other hand I had a wonderful, happy, 36 year career at TWA. Besides, of all the airlines I applied with TWA was the ONLY airline that asked me if I could fly a plane.
Flying gave me the time off to pursue violin seriously with no pressures. I played in several professional orchestras so I had the best of both worlds.
Good luck to you. P.S., Forgot to mention. The lesson here is never ever give up. If they kick you out the front door get back in via the back or side door. Life will be full of rejections. Live with them and work all the harder towards your goal, whatever it may be at the time. Accept a rejection as a call to bear down and give it your all.
On the other hand, be realistic. If you have the talent for what you want to do then by all means push hard until you get what you want. If you do not have the talent required to succeed against superb competition then don't chase a rabbit down a hole into an "Alice in Wonderland." fantasyland. Conrgatulations, Kelsey!

Ray, your funny post is getting me really worried about getting on board of an airplane.

Ihnsouk

I was rejected by UBC when I first applied. The reason being my English wasn’t good enough for university work. I went to a local college instead trying to improve my English, and was also rejected from the English department for the same reason. So instead I signed on to an epistemology course because there were a lot of empty seats still available after the term just started. I did well in that course and learned my English through studying philosophy! The following term, I successfully transferred to UBC. They apparently figured that if I could do philosophy, my English must be good enough, so much so that I did an honors and a masters both in philosophy and then a law degree after that. The truth is, my English will never be good enough, not if one takes a critical look at it and compare me with an equally educated native speaker. Fairness is not an issue here...

What I’ve learned from rejection is:
a)One door close, another open: it’s time for new opportunities;
b)It’s time for an appeal process: someone may have made a mistake that is correctable. If the decision is not changed, at least I know the reason behind without the painful guessing.
c)It’s time to re-examine your approach to the goal and to see if you can do it differently next time. Especially if you have gone through an appeal process, you’ll learn a lot from others. Something they say you may not agree and most will be upsetting to know; yet, these are the kind of stuff help us grow.

Cheers.

For the record, I'm going through the same college mess thing right now, this being the end of my junior year. One of the things that keeps me going is my best freind's life motto: "Life sucks. And then you die." It sounds awfully pessimistic, but it all winds down to: bad things happen and when we die we'll be free of it all, but while we're here on earth, we have to ignore the crud and put our best foot forward in all things. Sounds like you've really learned that! Congratulations; you're an inspiration for all of the millions of us that go through the same thing! Congrats to you! Yay! Congratulations and best of luck to you. Congratulations, Kelsey!

Sounds like you've had quite a hassle! I hope college goes well for you!