MIT Rejection

Ever get spanked as a kid?

Remember those few minutes between when your mom said, “Sit here and don’t say a word,” and when she finally came back and spanked you?

That’s how the last 5 months of my life have been.  I’ve been so sure that I’d get spanked, but I held out for it anyway.

Spanked being rejected from MIT, of course.

I’ve been expecting it.  It’d be a lie to say that I wasn’t expecting it.

But… I’m a little disappointed, I guess?

On the other hand, Auburn University has offered me a full scholarship.  Now, that’s pretty damn cool.  I don’t mind that at all.

And it’s been a battle in my mind for the past two months or so: what happens if I do accepted to MIT?  What if that tiny chance actually works?  What if I really am more incredible than 87% of the people who applied?

Well, I’m not.  I’m back with that 87%.  It’s… sad, a bit, I guess, but I’m in good company.

Some of these kids had perfect SAT and ACT scores.  My SAT and ACT as they were, I was probably tossed out first round.  They’re not perfect, they’re far from perfect.

But nonetheless, what if I was accepted?

Where would I get the money from?

I don’t have it.  My family doesn’t have it.  My family has just enough money to be in that annoying “middle class” bracket, where you don’t get anything to pay for college but you can’t afford it, either.

So that battle has been going down in my mind.  What if I get accepted to MIT?  Do I say yes?  How do I pay for it?  Should I follow what I know is right and go to Auburn and graduate in the green, or should I follow what I feel is right and go to my dream school?

Well, the decision was made for me.  MIT flaked out.

I got spanked.

But… that horrible feeling of “get it over with already” has disappeared.  I know where I’m going, at least in the fall, and that has been a burden to me for all of my senior year.  Where would I go?  What would I do?  Now I know, and all the better, they’ve offered me over $100,000 to cover it all.  How cool is that?

So, lessons learned: 

If it’s something you can’t control, expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed with the results.  I expected to be rejected.  I was.  It’s not really so bad.

If it’s something you can control, then it’s better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all.  Just the fact that I applied makes me feel better, and strenuous as it was, I feel like I’m a better person.  Certainly makes any application/interview process EVER seem easier by comparison.  Not to mention, if I had never applied, if I had gone on and said, “Oh, fuck it, I’ll never get in” back in October, then I would have never known.  And is it not better to know disappointment than it is to not know at all?  I hate that feeling of not knowing.  It eats at me.

Being normal is going to be okay.  I mean, look at Stanislaus versus Pass Christian.  People pay good money for their kids to go to a prestigious school, and the kids leave there dumb as rocks.  People pay little to nothing for their kids to go to a public school, and we’re the brainiest in the state.  How’s about those cookies?

So… I’m coming to terms with it.

I’m going to Auburn.  That’s not a horrible thing.  I can still have my grits, and if the itching to get out of the South hits me, well, there’s always co-op and study abroad, right?

War damn eagle.

Self-reassurance over.

I’m out