Rejection does not necessarily equal failure

What’s good, folk. I’ve decided to make a small addition to the site content that I hope you’ll enjoy. Over the past year, I’ve been inserting entries with links to articles that I find interesting along with my responses to reader emails. Starting with this entry, I’m going to add a video where I provide some commentary and advice with each of these articles. Also, I’m going to start posting videos where I talk through some thoughts on newsworthy issues in business, politics, global issues, etc. I figure that this could be a good way for me to give some tips on how I would think through these issues as a way to help others with analyzing them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to bring you guys this new content every couple of days or even more frequently if I’m inspired by something that has happened in the news.

This entry presents an article from The Huffington Post with a list of highly successful people who have experienced some kind of rejection in their academic career but rebounded from it to find great success. I thought this would be especially timely given the number of people who are applying to graduate school, some of whom will not get the acceptances they seek. This issue especially resonates with me because of the many setbacks that I’ve faced and the good fortune that I’ve had to keep on pushing forward. I hope that you find the stories of the folks featured in the article to be as inspirational as I did.

By the way, I’d like to send a special shout-out to everyone from the Stanford GSB second round applicants for the Class of 2012 who received the good word about their acceptances yesterday. I found out from one of my admissions advisory clients that she got one of those calls, so I’m excited that she’s going to be a part of my alumni network (Congratulations, LR!!!)

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“Rich And Famous College REJECTS”
Author: Lindsay Dittman
Source: The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/27/rich-and-famous-college-r_n_515931.html

Introductory text from the article:

As envelopes fat and thin fill the mailboxes of hopeful college seniors around the country, it’s important to remember that acceptance to a certain school does not guarantee wild wealth, international stardom, knighthood or all of the above. With some colleges accepting less than ten percent of their applicants, there are BOUND to be brilliant minds in the reject pool — here’s proof.

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My commentary:

Rejection does not necessarily equal failure from Marquis Parker on Vimeo.

Key points:
– Plenty of successful people in business, education, law, and government have experienced rejection of some kind and the common trait among those people is that they did not let those rejections destroy their ambitions to be great
– Not getting into a desired graduate school program or not being offered a job at a desired employer is not the end of the world; DO NOT TREAT IT THAT WAY!!!
– The key is to understand that setbacks and roadblocks don’t necessarily have to stop a person from striving for his/her dreams and moving forward on one’s desired path

“God don’t make mistakes must be something bigger waiting”
-Big Boi from Outkast, ‘Hollywood Divorce’