Rupesh Gajurel

When I received my rejection letter from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), I thought, “So Caltech it is then.” When Caltech turned me down, I thought I am going to have hard time deciding between Princeton and Yale. And when I received my rejection letters from both Princeton and Yale, I stopped thinking. For a moment I tried writing a nasty note to all the deans of the universities how they were deliberately conniving with the Bush administration’s conspiracy to prevent students from third world countries from getting into top schools there so that the US could continue behaving like a Big Brother in the Global arena. Unfortunately, I knew such a foolhardy act would only bring me more trouble.

Then, for a nanosecond, I cursed myself for not applying to Harvard. I liked the idea, pondered more on it and finally, it was all clear. I was too good for MIT and that I was more of a Harvard material; I should have applied to Harvard in the first place. Tough luck!

Ok, I will stop bluffing. I was undeniably miserable and devastated more than you can imagine. MIT was my dream. It was one of those dreams when realised change the course of your life. And I had failed. I didn’t believe at first that I had actually failed at such an attempt. Thus, it followed:

denial, anger, frustration, self-pity, remorse, everything, not in the same order but intertwined in a big package called “You suck, loser.” Ultimately, how did I deal with it? Well, I acknowledged my rejections.

Quoting Joel Stein, a humorist and TIME columnist, “…I’d rather have the peace of accomplishing more than I set out to do than the hunger that comes with believing success causes happiness.” Couldn’t have said it better. I did have the peace of accomplishing more than I set out to do. Two years ago I hadn’t thought, not even in my wildest dream, that one day I would apply to MIT. But I did and it may not be MIT, I will be getting an undergraduate degree from a good college. And you readers out there must be thinking this is exactly the same type of gibberish losers spit out. But truly, I don’t care. All of us are losers at some point of time.

For my Master’s, I am thinking of applying to every Graduate school there is, just to rest assured.