I applied to grad school this year. 8 of the top schools for my field, I have a decent GPA and relevant experience so I thought maybe at least 1 would take me. My parents, who are in the same field, told me it would be a shoe-in. Everyone else asked me what my safeties were, but I didn’t apply to any.
I didn’t do any research, and that’s on me. I just trusted what my parents said, and that’s not their fault, they couldn’t have known how competitive it is nowadays, and how I’m not actually good enough for any of these schools. I should’ve known. I should’ve done the research, this is my fault.
I was supposed to take a class on how to get a job/apply to grad, but I saved it until this semester because all of my friends said it was useless. I should’ve taken it earlier, before I applied. I should’ve talked to an advisor, but I haven’t spoken to any advisors since college went remote. All of my friends applied to the right programs and are going to grad, law, med school next year. I’m going to have to tell them that they were right, the schools were too hard and I failed. Everyone expressed doubts, and everyone was right. I’m a fucking idiot for not listening.
I don’t want to get a job and try again. Going through the whole process again to get rejected again. I’m not good enough for this, even if I apply again, maybe I won’t be then either. I’ll be older when I graduate because I take time in between. My entire plan from like, middle school, is destroyed by me being lazy, not doing research because I knew I would fail and I was afraid of that. I’m lazy, I failed to get enough experience or good grades or fucking write a good enough letter. I failed, and now I have to tell everyone that I’m a failure, and I’m not smart or good or deserve any of the ego I have.
I’d rather die. I don’t know what the fuck to do with my life. Some of my friends are getting jobs and then applying to grad, which is a valid and normal and awesome path! But it’s not the path I had myself on for years, and granted, neither is better than the other but I literally cannot imagine my life in any other way. I want to fucking die. I hate myself for doing this to me, I can’t see more of a future. Do I even fucking like my field? What the fuck am I doing with my future? If I’m not in grad school next year, then my entire nice safe envisionment of my future collapses and I don’t fucking know what to do.
And I have to write a thesis, right. But the subject is something none of my mentors know a lot about, and 1 of my 2 mentors just got a new job and stopped contacting me. The other doesn’t actually remember what my project is about when we meet, which is fair! She’s busy! But I’m so lost with my thesis, I don’t know how to start doing research and I feel like no one can help me. I’m being so dramatic, everyone in their 20s is having this existential crisis, and that’s fine. My dad got rejected from grad schools for 3 years before he got in.
But he had a wife and kids and something to show from college. I don’t have awards or papers or projects or an SO, because I try just enough to scrape by with A’s and I’m intensely shy and would definitely leave before expressing my emotions to another human being and honestly I should just get a therapist so I can be a better person to everyone around me instead of moping but the idea of telling a real person how I feel is terrifying. I’m scared they’ll tell me it’s self pity, which it almost certainly is, and I’m being dramatic. That’s what my mom always says. She says I make myself upset, and that I blow my problems up and I’m happy to wallow. She’s right, I mean, this fucking post. But I wish that I could like, close the tab on my life and have nothing affect me. I wish I could hang up the phone or wake up and not be rejected from all of these schools, and genuinely not be someone with nothing to be proud of.
I’m not good. I’m self-absorbed and selfish and stuck up and I’m sorry. I’ve been drunk most of the day for the past couple of weeks and I’ve been cutting pretty consistently after a year long clean streak. I’m a failure though, and I didn’t try hard enough so it’s fine. Everyone around me is talking about their grad and law schools and I have no plan B because I’m a dumbass. And my friends are suicidal and relying on me but I don’t want to live another day like this. I don’t want to feel that crushing anxiety of what I’m doing in the future, then the realization that I fucked up, that I fucked this up for myself. I’m not good enough, and I want out. I’m so fucking ashamed and disappointed in myself.
3 comments
I think too often we get so stuck to plan we forget life is about the living, you aren’t an automaton you aren’t stuck to this one specific plan… all because things don’t go exactly as you planned doesn’t mean you have failed. Think of this as your defining moment. Don’t let this step back define all of your success. You’ve got this I promise you do
Your story sounds very similar like my little brother’s story. Even when my brother have studied & worked so hard (he is a perfect student) in his Ph.D & double master/grad degree, even self-studying by himself in one of the most difficult field (Civil Engineering), yet sadly life (reality) still destroyed & crushed all his works, efforts, & dreams. Life (& reality) has changed him now to become severely depressed & suicidal.
That’s the easy way, isn’t it? Well you sought to become learned, thus learn this lesson that no person perfect, and no person a failure. You failed in this act, this attempt. I did the same a year ago in a similar attempt, and I keep fighting, keep trying, because what else am I going to do?
I didn’t get even so far as an interview with any of my preferred grad schools. Spat at in the face, after being considered brilliant by my professors and fellow students. What does that teach? In fact it teaches that brilliance either is not an effective metric for grad school, or that those that considered me so were poor judges. In either case, this is new data, and useful.
The fact is that we are all, to an extent, frauds. None of us hold our value under all circumstances, as you should be well aware of with your admirable ability. Alternatively, because framing is everything, we are all at least somewhat amazing. We reach higher, and every person I have ever met has had an exquisite moment of elegance and majesty.
Grad school wasn’t going to be easy, you know that. Getting in may be quite the ordeal, but it is not earning the degree. You have to go through thesis approval, having your work challenged every step of the way. The only way you earn a graduate diploma is by working for it, or buying it from a school of questionable ethics. The true value of it is in what it makes you, how it molds you into a better thinker.
Continuing my story; A year ago I received letters of rejection from all the schools I applied to. Personalized letters, weeks in the making, long nights studying for exams, all frittered away, like dust in the wind. A few weeks later a pandemic hit. I own a small home, and the local housing market has not done well enough that I could have sold to go to these prestigious schools. I suppose I would be equally miserable then as I was on hearing of my rejections. I’d go one further; I would have preferred the rejections than to have my dreams dangled in front of me and snatched away.
Following that, I graduated. From April until September 14th I undertook a rabid search trying to get a decent job. In September it appeared I had found one, and now due to the indiscretions of my supervisor I may be proven wrong. New data and emergent trends are always on the march. More than thirty applications, a dozen interviews, five small towns driven to for interviews, one job, thus far. Yet I try to leverage what I’ve learned here into something better.
The world owes us nothing. It is consistent only in delivery of tragedy and disappointment. That hurts, because learning hurts. We get smarter, it finds new ways to demonstrate the callous and cruel heart of man.
If you discard this pain, you become as they. You become part of the unfeeling machine by which you feel so ill used. By allowing them to discard your passion, your ability, you allow them to sort out deviation, struggle. It seems to me more appealing to be a bunion on the heel of academic and capable society. Surely if we are effective they will desire to remove us, and there is no sin in being removed so long as we don’t do it ourselves.
Consider that they have demonstrated their shortcomings, their lacking, and their lack of perception. That, is their flaw. You merely cast your pearls before swine. Find more refined and perceptive persons to appreciate what you offer.