Acceptance By Rejection

I must have looked a little foolish; naieve, for sure. My fiance opened the mailbox and as the letters tumbled past the door and onto the linoleum floor in the lobby of our apartment building, I saw the logo of one of the first newspapers I had applied to staring back at me. I gasped - I actually gasped, right out loud - and had it torn open in record time.

Even before I could process the circumstances: Why would a newspaper send mail to an applicant, if they could simply telephone or e-mail said applicant? What kind of job interview is set up through the mail?

The kind that never takes place. I should have come to this logical, reasonable conclusion before I'd even reached down to retrieve the envelope, but I didn't. At the very least, this should have come to my attention before I stood, eyes wide and breath suspended, unfolding the thick off-white paper. But, I didn't. I even let my eyes jump half-way down the letter, like a high school senior waiting to hear from their first-choice college, ignoring whether they mispelled my name and the initial generic greeting.

Ah, the first rejection letter of my adult life. I knew they would pour in some day, and I know it won't be the last - far from it, I imagine, especially in the next few months. The hardest part about this stage in my life, I've decided, is not the process of finding a job, apply to job, wait for reply, and be rejected. The hardest part is slowing down.

I still find myself feeling anxious on Sunday afternoons, the way I did when I suddenly realized as the sun was going down on the weekend that I had a research paper due the next day, or a book to be read for a morning discussion. Sometimes I feel like I'm procrastinating, though I know there is nothing I could be putting off. Even keeping track of the bills is simpler than juggling five or six classes-worth of readings, writings, and thought processes.

When I was five, on the second day of kindergarten, I clamped my arms and legs around a leg of the dining room table, just as the bus was pulling up in front of the house. I had absolutely no intention of going back to school - I had no desire to permantently alter my routine, to start spending my days somewhere other than at my house, with my mother and younger sister. I don't remember how they got me out from under that table, but they must have. I spent the next 17 years in school, and the end of every summer vacation since, for a fleeting but intense moment, I'd find myself frantically searching for a table leg to cling to.

Then I graduated college, and I moved to Boston with my fiance. Graduate school was to be my table leg. But the closer it got to the end of summer, the more logic and reason prevailed, and I saved the money I didn't have and decided to start my career rather than extend another routine. I crawled out from under the table and realized I could never go back, and although the process of developing a new daily normalcy is terrifying and bittersweet, I have to keep reminding myself that just as school became the center of my life, so will a new routine.

Only this time, I'll be getting paid.