Success is the exception

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Read more from the original author:
denissanrz – Medium

I thought this would be the year i finally made it. A lots of sleepless night that i have going through to preparing documents, writing personal statement, checking application portals, and imagining what my life looks like if i actually got accepted. I knew, it wouldn’t be easy. But, somewhere in my mind, if i worked hard enough one of those application would work out. Then a few months later, came the rejection. One after another. And suddenly, i felt the dream i had been holding onto started to further away.

Failing to get a master degree with fully funded scholarship is a strange kind of failure, cause i feel like i’ve failed both at the same time. There is no dramatic moment, no one tell that i have failed. I simply open an e-mail, then read a few sentences, and that’s it. I closed my laptop, and continue with my day as if nothing happened. But in reality, something did happen to me. For a moment, i start questioning everything. Did i something wrong? Is it my whole application not good enough? or perhaps someone else deserved it more? I don’t know.

And you know? i felt a hardest part of this situation is accepting the answer doesn’t go the way i hoped.

Despite all the disappointment, i still want to get it. I still want to experience with a different education system, i still want to learn another environtment, and see how far i can go. Sometimes i rethink again, maybe that’s something failure has thaugt me. I can be disappointed and still keep going, i can question my self and still try again, i can feel exhausted without having to abandon the dream that made me start in the 1st place.

For me, failure has a strong connection with bravery. It takes courage not only to face failure, but also to keep moving forward when you feel like everyone else is already ahead of you. In my twenties, it’s easy to see life as a race where everyone seems to have their own finish line: a career, a relationship, a degree, a house, or a certain definition of success. I realized, there’s no universal timeline for how our lives should unfold. Some people get there earlier, some get there later, and some take a completely different road. I think the real bravery is not in reaching the finish line first, but in having the courage to keep walking on a path that is uniquely on my own. And maybe, that’s okay.

So, if you’re also in your 20s and wondering why your life isn’t moving as quickly as everyone else’s, i hope you remember that you’re not a failure because something didn’t work out. You’re not behind because someone else got there first. You’re not uncapable because you received a lots of rejection. And you don’t have to turn every failure into a lesson immediately. It’s normal to take a break, allowed to rest, and admit that something you really wanted didn’t happen right now.

I still don’t know where this road will take me. I don’t know which the opportunities will eventually open a door, or whether the path i imagined for myself will look the same a few years from now. But maybe i don’t need to know yet. I want to keep going, keep learning, keep hoping, and keep becoming the person i want to be. The point of my twenties isn’t to have everything figured out, but to have the courage to keep becoming, even when life doesn’t look the way i thought it would. One day, when i look back at all these rejection emails, all the uncertainty, and all the moments when i wondered whether i was falling behind, i won’t remember them as proof that i wasn’t good enough. I’ll remember them as proof that i cared enough about my dream to keep trying.

After all, i was simply still on my way.

See you tomorrow with something new!

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