Last weekend I was fortunate enough to experience two different types of rejection in twenty-four hours. The ‘no’ was actually the same—I will not be moving forward in the audition process of either NYU or Yale—but they felt completely different. I have come to understand them as: Clean Rejection, Dirty Rejection.
On Friday, on the fifth floor of Tisch in my second holding room of the day, I tried to calm myself down by writing. I had done what I thought was solid preparation for the morning. I went to yoga the evening before. I slept a decent amount. I woke up in time to call my best friend for a pep talk while walking through the park. But I was shaky from the moment I walked in, lightheaded, out of breath. I was the first to audition. A siren wailed by as I was in the middle of my stand-and-deliver dramatic monologue drowning out my breathless attempt at emotional course correction. It’s possible I made it to the second round just so they could hear the end. For my brief and final round, I seemed to hover above myself, looking on in bafflement as I delivered a Juliet monologue with about as much conviction as a boiled egg. When I was stopped in the middle of my weird (but louder) recitation and thanked for my time, I knew I wouldn’t hear my name for the last round of the day.
Notes from holding room 2:
I made a waiting room friend. We identified each other as willing and able to lend and receive little witticisms before stepping into the arena. Now we cling to each other during the long stretches of wait time. Except in the moments when it becomes clear we’re on our own. When one of us is on deck or when the list of names is about to be read. Then we separate. Cleave the other’s future from our own. Then perhaps back together. The only familiar thing, and it’s a person you don’t know…The mandarin won’t settle in my stomach and I’m loath to vomit stringy chunks of California orange onto Mr. Cofield.
Dirty rejection: one where you walk away knowing you blew it. You can list everything you should have done differently. Whatever you presented is unrecognizable to you as an accurate representation of yourself. You cry on the couch and ask your boyfriend why you picked something so hard (and when he asks if you mean grad school you give an amazing tearful line reading: “this career”). You watch Mean Girls alone in a mostly empty theater.
At 10:30am the next day I boarded a train for New Haven. I wore a black jumpsuit instead of the previous day’s olive. I closed my eyes in the holding room, my breathing remained even. I was the first in my block again, but this time I did what I know how to do: I played, I adjusted, I fed off of my thundering heart rate and did my work. At 2:45 when the list was posted for those moving on, my name wasn’t on it.
Clean rejection: you can walk away with no lingering threads. Nothing keeps you tied to the room, wondering what would have happened if you had just done x instead of y. You board the train back to New York disappointed, but proud.
Just before my birthday I wrote about the seductive trap of the resolution. Instead of a set of goals, from December 27th to about January 15th, I try to discern what the vibe of the year is going to be. It is important to me that this is more reflective than aspirational, a delicate balance of both what feels true in the present and what I feel like I’m calling in for the future. 2022 was the year of abundance, 2023 challenge, and 2024 has revealed itself to be my Genesis year.
Genesis is my favorite book of the Bible. It is the one I have spent the most time with and the one with the best spin-offs, like James Weldon Johnson’s The Creation, a beautiful riff on how God forms the world. In both the original and Johnson’s version God creates, declares it good, and moves on to his next impulse. He doesn’t spend time dithering, wondering if it is a good idea to make spiders hairy or to give cockroaches the ability to fly. I don’t have the benefit of omniscience, so I cannot claim to only make good choices, but the idea of acting, evaluating, and then moving on is enticing. I spent a lot of 25 thinking. It was necessary—as my prefrontal cortex finally fused, I found myself with far greater contemplative power—but the vibe of 2024 is action. Make a decision, follow it through, and then reflect, because it’s just not possible to think yourself into only making the “right moves.” I’m all about taking some wild leaps this year, I’ll let you know where I land.
xx
Mia
This explains my continuous thoughts of you last week. I admire your determination and spirit! Here’s to a renewed start in 2024!!!