rejection

I didn’t get into the schools I wanted to for my MBA. To be sure, I am a bit sad, but I am not nearly as sad as I thought I would be. I have changed a lot in the past year, and this change has taught me that the path I thought I wanted to go down is not necessarily the path I want to keep going down. For a really long time, I thought I wanted to get an MBA. It was the last gated “thing” I wanted to do in my life before I moved onto the next part of my life. A lot of things I did for the past couple of years was in service of this. I don’t regret doing the things I did per se, but I should’ve been more open to the fact that these things I do have an uncertain payoff and asking myself, would I be comfortable with my choices even if they didn’t bring me the achievements I wanted them to bring?

I have made a lot of improvements in this — trying to tailor my life to be more process- than achievement-driven — at least compared to how I handled my life in undergrad, but it’s important to remind myself of these lessons every now and then. You don’t know everything. You don’t get everything you wanted to. You have to be okay with these outcomes and live your life with the understanding that these outcomes are real possibilities.

The change in my trajectory has truly been astonishing when I look at it in retrospect. My life was so flat throughout elementary to high school. Then college, one year after the next, I learn something about myself that propelled me on this trajectory I am now. I used to think growth was linear, but that is just because growth always seems linear in the beginning parts of an exponential curve curve. I feel like I am on an exponential trajectory, that I have accumulated so much momentum that I an unstoppable regardless of the roadblocks that exist along the way.

I had this realization that I can figure it out. Anything. I’m no longer constrained by environmental limitations because I have saved up enough where I could maintain a good quality of life even in the event of prolonged unemployment. This is freeing. I have time now in a way that I didn’t before. I have a dissatisfaction with corporate life that makes me understand that there is a trade off to everything, most notably between freedom and security when it comes to your career. Roadblocks don’t bother me because I can figure it out. You never know when a detour could save you some time.