Wall of Shame

First, I want to say, it was not my idea.

It’s common practice, we all did it.

You apply to top schools, a couple in the middle tier, and some safety that you know you can get into. We were all graduating from college. I was applying to medical school along with a few others, another to law school, a couple others to grad schools, some applying for jobs in consulting and finance.

I don’t remember whose idea it was, but we were unprepared for the result… Rejection letters. When you shoot for the top, go for the long shot, aim for the moon, sometimes you miss! Rejection letters come early. The first round of disqualifications means a one page form letter arrives in your mailbox. It was better not getting a letter… then there were possibilities. With each rejection letter, I got more and more depressed and afraid that I would not even get into my safety school.

Outside my room, there was an alcove with a sofa and a couple chairs that my friends would hang out in. One friend did the unthinkable. She posted her first rejection letter with pride. Then, others began to post their letters. “Look,” another friend announced proudly, “I got another one for our wall.” We started to talk about the letters, our hopes and our dreams, the ones that were still alive with pending applications and the ones that had suffered an early demise. And so we started to talk about our failures and what we were going to do next. In fact, I started to send in more applications… just so I could take up more space on that wall. We wanted to fill up that “Wall of Shame.” It was a source of pride.

In those final stages, as the clock ticks down, we all started to worry. Some of us received those larger acceptance packages, some were going on early interviews, others were still waiting to hear.

I’m not sure exactly who started that “Wall of Shame,” but I am grateful. Shame would have sent me into hiding my letters, not talking to anyone, suffering alone. Together, we supported each other through this grueling process that would determine our future careers.

Today, I am proud of my successes… but I am also proud of the failures. Nothing is ever wasted as I take what I learned from that failure, get up again, and fail forward again and again into success.

How did this story end for us? I went to University of Michigan Medical School. We all began the next stage of our career. However, the friend who I suspect started that Wall of Shame, she had her heart set on one particular top law school. She got into other top schools, but not that one. She took a year off to work in a prestigious internship program, reapplied to only that school, and got in. I was so proud of her, but also amazed at her dedication as she dared to dream big.

In life, I have discovered that it is not how you deal with your successes, but how you deal with your failures that will determine whether you ultimately succeed. We will all meet disappointment in life, but what will we do with it?

When one door closes, the resilient people like my law school friend work through that “wall of shame,” courageously redefine what they really want, and find another way to get there.

What will you do?