On the power of rejection

How the feeling can drive you forward

Long before I decided I wanted to be a writer—as in, get paid to write—I thought I wanted to be a teacher. Unlike the nuns who taught me in preschool, who were more feared than revered, I admired my teachers. I’d spent the first ten years of my life educated in a Vietnamese primary school, where being a teacher was a highly coveted job. In my village, children and adults often looked up to teachers because they were seen as pillars of knowledge. They had taken the time to get educated and so they deserved that respect.

At least, that was the general consensus.

Fast forward to my high school years when I put the thought of becoming a teacher on the backburner and instead, focused on my vision of a glamourous life as a fashion designer. Two years into studying fashion design at Oregon State University, I realized that perhaps my future wasn’t destined to be glamorous. Perhaps I needed to be more realistic and get a “real job,” a job that is more likely to pay me a consistent wage rather than chase after an elusive dream that may not guarantee any kind of immediate reward.

At one point, I wanted to be a photographer too.

So there I was, a twenty-five-year old sitting in a classroom at Lewis & Clark College, a room that had been rented for a special event—first round interviews for a coveted position as a teacher for Teach for America. A year before, I’d read a book about the rise of Teach for America, an organization that recruits recent college graduates and sends them around the country to various school districts to teach primary and secondary school, without any real teacher certification. Of course, during the two years that you sign on, they will pay for you to get your master’s degree, but teaching real schoolchildren was how you earn your experience.

I was mystified and excited, for I felt like I’d stepped into a golden opportunity. Never mind the fact that I didn’t have any real, verifiable experience with children, not even babysitting. I applied anyway, and was delighted when they invited me in for an interview. I sat straight in my chair as the interviewer led us through a series of events, one of which involved a presentation on how you’d teach a subject of your choice.

I felt that I nailed that particular section. Then came the personal interviews.

I sat there as the interviewer—a perky brunette who didn’t look older than 28—asked me about my current job, what I liked and didn’t like about it. I replied in my most honest voice, but underneath I struggled a lot with this question. You see, at the time, I was working in what I considered a dead-end job, with no real prospects for advancement. Not only that, the pay was so little and I experienced bullying at work, so much that I often came home crying.

Of course, I couldn’t relay any of this. So I said, “I really like the people I work with.”

This is not true. I only liked one person I worked with. The rest…not so much.

As far as what I didn’t like about my job, I responded, “The medical field isn’t exactly what I want to be doing.”

Both of these answers were quite vague and didn’t convey my true self, the self that I was desperately trying to hide from.

Just two years prior, in 2008, I’d graduated into one of the worst economic recessions in America’s history. I had a business degree but no idea what I wanted to do with my life. When I heard about Teach for America, I regained my childhood dream, and thought, for a moment that this was the respite I needed.

Turns out, I was wrong. Not surprisingly, the rejection email came several weeks later.

Virginia Sole-Smith @v_solesmith

“Being a writer is my last choice of job. I’d only do that if I REALLY needed the money,” — my 8-year-old who I’m clearly really impressing.

When I think about this particular experience that occurred over a decade ago, I remembered how heartbroken I was. This is because it was the biggest rejection I’d ever experienced in my life. But it wouldn’t be the last. The other day, I received a rejection from a job that I’d applied for, a job that would allow me to actually write for a living. The recruiter had asked me to do a “writing exercise,” and I was so certain that I had performed well enough to get an interview, or the job even.

Admittedly, my ego got the best of me. For a while, I forgot that most of the time, rejections aren’t about you or your abilities at all. Most of the time, it’s due to external factors. Maybe they had too many applicants who are similar to one another and they had to cut the cord somewhere. Maybe it’s first come, first serve. Maybe there’s no money in the budget to hire you at the rate you want. Whatever the case is, the decision is out of your control.

But just because rejections are more likely to happen than acceptances doesn’t make it any less painful. Like a kick in the gut, it hurts. It feels personal, and yet it’s not.

I began to think deeper about the role of rejection in our lives. And I’m reminded of a book I read recently called Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America by Mayukh Sen. I was introduced to Sen’s work when he did an author talk several months ago with some prominent food writers. After hearing him speak, I was intent on finding out exactly what (or whom) he was talking about in his book. Taste Makers is a collective biography of seven immigrant women from various countries, selected for the legacy and the impact they made in the food industry. But somehow these women’s stories have never been highlighted until now.

Of the seven women profiled in the book, many came of age during tumultuous periods in their country. Political power shifted from one party to another, causing revolutions. Things burned down. Accidents occurred. Buildings were destroyed. Wars came and went. Many lives were lost. What these women have in common is that they were all part of a marginalized group who were not given a voice until now. Some of them did achieve great fame but lived in the shadow of Julia Child, often being referred to as “The Julia Child of______.” [insert cuisine] as if they weren’t fully their own person with their own unique set of culinary skills.

The story of Najmieh Batmanglij, an Iranian-American chef born in 1947, and now known as the “guru of Iranian cooking,” wowed me the most, for she was the woman who did it all. She fled a country that she loved for peace and freedom, only to discover that peace and freedom came with a price – rejection in the form of overt racism. In the early 1980s, America’s views about Iranians weren’t exactly rosy (the Iranian Revolution was still fresh on people’s minds), so it wasn’t surprising when she couldn’t find a single publisher who was willing to publish her cookbook.

Instead of giving up, Najmieh teamed up with her husband. Together, they created their own imprint and self-published her cookbook titled Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies. Over the years, there would be several more revised editions and more cookbooks.

Then there’s the story about Elena Zelayeta, the Mexican chef who opened a restaurant during the Great Depression and who learned how to cook blind. Yes, you read that right. In a cruel twist of fate, she lost her eyesight (which occurred because a bout of scarlet fever she had as a baby later turned into a mature cataract which surgery couldn’t fix) right after her son was born. Then she became a widow the age of forty eight. Through all the ups and downs caused by familial strife and her blindness, Elena was a hardcore woman who never lost sight of who she really was.

These are just two examples of women whose stories were absolutely stunning to read about.  Reading these stories inspired me to keep going after a recent painful rejection. It reminds me that there are many women – and people – out there standing on the margins, waiting for their turn. It isn’t fair to say, “Why not me?” but fairer to say, “What’s next? How do I move on?” for every experience of rejection tells us something we don’t know about ourselves. Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned from all these rejections is that one can keep going, no matter what. 

Rejection doesn’t have to be painful. In fact, it can be the driving force that guides us towards something better and more meaningful. It forces us to reevaluate our lives and where we can go next. Instead of stopping and ending your journey because you’ve “made it,” rejection forces us to say, “I didn’t get it this time, so what I can do next time?” It’s not a matter of, “Now what?” but rather, “What’s next?”

Think about what would happen if success always came your way. If you get your dream job right out of college. If the person you like reciprocates the feeling right away. If you found the house of dreams the first time around. If you succeeded the first time you tried to quit smoking or lose weight. If you sat down and worked on learning that skill you’ve been wanting to learn for a long time and everything just clicked into place.

In all of these situations, there are no conflicts and no setbacks. I think this makes life less interesting to live. Without conflicts or setbacks, we don’t learn important life lessons that we can take into the following years of our lives. In fact, I would even dare say that it doesn’t teach us resilience, which is so important to have when life gets hard. You have to be able to move on, and without resilience and hope, you can’t.

Take for example, the debut author Elizabeth Gonzalez James. I interviewed her at the end of last year for an author profile (you can read it here), in which she told me about her ten year journey into publishing. From the time that she began writing her book, Mona at Sea, to when it was finally published, ten years had gone by. Throughout that decade, she received many rejections and setbacks. And yet, she persisted. She continued to revise and submit, and finally found a publisher. And she said something that really stuck with me ever since. She said, “Most people give up just when they’re about to achieve success. They quit on the one-yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.”

I love these kind of rejection stories. Whenever I come across a story like Elizabeth’s, I collect them like baseball cards, much like the stories about rejection that the seven immigrant women experienced in Taste Makers. These kind of stories remind me to keep going, that no one is perfect. None of us have a perfect formula for success. We can only take what doesn’t work to fuel our fire, to learn from our mistakes, to get back up again.

With that thought, I’ll leave you with this delightful song about a little girl named Poppy who is so bright and cheerful and who never gives up, even after rejection, that she fuels my happiness every time I see her in this video. That, my friends, is the beauty of Trolls.

In case you missed it…

• On friendship across borders

• On assimilation and identity through food

• On coming of age on the other side

Goal update:

As I shared in a previous post, I’ve been working on my first novel. Well, I am happy to report that I am now officially 30% in! That means I’ve written 30,000 words of my 90,000 word goal. Whew! I can breathe a sigh of relief and treat myself to bubble tea now.

How are you doing with your goals? Reply and let me know so I can give you a thumbs up!