How rejection can be your biggest success

Honorable Mention, Experiences Category
Christopher Reeves, Auburn University

The experience that has made me the most successful in both my personal life and in vet school would be, hands down, my rejection from vet school.  On the surface this may seem like an oxymoron, but it is the painful truth.  I owe everything I have accomplished to being told, “you’re not good enough… yet.”

After a typical college experience, I remember the day I was given my answer.  It was April of 2009, I was graduating the next month and I had gone home to Mobile Alabama to visit with my family.  That Saturday night we were about to sit down to have dinner; a London broil, asparagus, potatoes, and rolls to be exact, and I checked Facebook.  All of my friends had updated their statuses about whether or not they had gotten in.  A brick dropped in my stomach because I was 217 miles away from my Auburn mailbox.  I called up my brother and begged him, successfully, to drive the 53 miles from Montgomery to check the mail.  That whole dinner I was too anxious to eat, and about an hour later he called me.  I still remember the conversation:

 

“Hey man I’m pulling up!

Yup, the letter is in here… ‘Dear Christopher Reeves, yadda yadda yadda

We wish to inform you that you have been selected…

To be placed on the alternate list…

Dude I’m so sorry… But you still have a shot right?!”

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