How rejection can be your biggest success

Honorable Mention, Experiences Category
Christopher Reeves, Auburn University

The experience that has made me the most successful in both my personal life and in vet school would be, hands down, my rejection from vet school.  On the surface this may seem like an oxymoron, but it is the painful truth.  I owe everything I have accomplished to being told, “you’re not good enough… yet.”

After a typical college experience, I remember the day I was given my answer.  It was April of 2009, I was graduating the next month and I had gone home to Mobile Alabama to visit with my family.  That Saturday night we were about to sit down to have dinner; a London broil, asparagus, potatoes, and rolls to be exact, and I checked Facebook.  All of my friends had updated their statuses about whether or not they had gotten in.  A brick dropped in my stomach because I was 217 miles away from my Auburn mailbox.  I called up my brother and begged him, successfully, to drive the 53 miles from Montgomery to check the mail.  That whole dinner I was too anxious to eat, and about an hour later he called me.  I still remember the conversation:

 

“Hey man I’m pulling up!

Yup, the letter is in here… ‘Dear Christopher Reeves, yadda yadda yadda

We wish to inform you that you have been selected…

To be placed on the alternate list…

Dude I’m so sorry… But you still have a shot right?!”

 

I knew my GPA wasn’t terribly strong, but I thought I had done well enough to get in.  I mean, I loved this profession. I DESERVED a spot.  I had already made a backup plan just in case, and I started getting to work on applying to grad school to get a Master’s of Agriculture.  For a long time I was bitter about this degree, because it symbolized my failure.  But when I look back on the program I realize that it taught me everything I needed to get to where I am today.  Our lab was in charge of greeting and entertaining distinguished guests that were invited to lecture to the department.  Because I had to interact with individuals who I viewed as “larger than life” in a very personal, as in across-the-table-there-are-only-five-of-us-here personal, level.  I had to collaborate, learn, and even teach some of the professors in the department which helped me take criticism and stand up for what I know and believe.  I had to learn how to teach myself from the literature and synthesize new information.  But most importantly, I learned who I was.

 

This sounds corny, but it’s true.  The experience reinforced that this profession was what I wanted to do and I was going to fight to make it come true.  I took some classes that helped me better prepare for the task of taking on vet school.  I learned how to study, which I really had never done before, and I do plenty of now.  I also made some very good friends there.  These have allowed me to be a better student leader and interact more efficiently with the college administration.  My degree probably also played a big part in receiving the Army Health Professionals Scholars Program.  And I also made some extremely close friends who I wouldn’t trade for the world, or the admission. So I guess in the end, my failure was one of my greatest successes.