As with anyone, I hoped that when I applied for the graduate job I really wanted, I’d get good news and be heading to an interview. The day I started getting sick I got bad news, I’d been rejected for the position and wasn’t even getting a phone interview. I didn’t just cry, I sobbed my heart out. I’d been thinking about that job non stop for months, it just seemed like a good move for me and something I really wanted. I was always going to write about it, because this is a part of student life, we all have to deal with rejection.

I’ve never been one to handle anything associated with failure well because I am a perfectionist. I need everything to be handled and right and I just need to get things done and because I always put 110% into everything I do and when I don’t achieve I do get anxious and stressed. I feel like I let myself down and I get incredibly angry with myself and list things I need to do better next time. In some ways that’s good, but other people remind me I’m too hard on myself. It’s just a job and there will be other opportunities but it doesn’t always feel like that.

I know that right now a lot of us students are going to be getting rejection emails and sometimes it just knocks you off track. I’ve been having a bit of a meltdown, made worse by being ill, not knowing what I’m going to do after I graduate, what I want to do and what I want in the bigger picture. From what I’ve worked out a lot of students feel like that right now and it’s normal.

I’m trying to take the advice of the people around me, that it wasn’t meant to happen and they’re the ones missing out. Ali sat down the night of the rejection and just listed all the amazing things I’ve done and what I’d put in the application and that they missed out. I’m hoping this is true, it didn’t make the rejection hurt any less, but I’ll find something eventually.