Rejection Letters

At my daughter Beatrix’s school, an old money private college prep school, it has become a tradition to hang up college rejection letters in the Senior Commons. Personal details blacked out. Mostly, just the recipients name since these are generally form letters. A whole wall of “We regret to inform you…” and “We had an large number of qualified applicants like yourself but…”

All of the Ivy League schools are represented (Yale, Harvard, etc.). Of course, many of the top State Schools are too (Penn,The Ohio State, etc.). The various Institutes of Science and Technology as well (MIT, RIT, etc.). Basically, these are almost all schools you would have heard the names of. And though almost all of these kids do get many acceptances to and end up attending many prestigious schools, including many of the ones hanging on this wall, not every kid is accepted into every school. These are the ones that got away from them. The moon shots and far reaches or just the wrong boards in a bingo game.

I love this tradition. The kids do too. It is a way of dealing with disappointment and rejection that is healthy, cathartic, and even celebratory.

The school administration tried to stop it this year. I had a hard time discerning from them a clear argument why. They made some general handwaving about it being too negative. Some general Peanuts Adult whah whah about defeatism.

The kids pushed back. The teachers took their side and lobbied with them. The school counsellors (all licensed therapists/phycologists) supported them. They argued that this was an incredibly healthy way to deal with rejection. That it helps normalize for these high achieving kids that you can’t win them all. That sometimes in life, no matter how hard you work, the answer is still no.

The letters went up. A mini-museum of healthy failure.