040: A Tale of Two Rejections
Well, three, but that title ~sounded better~
Hi friends,
Well, I haven’t haunted these halls since Halloween. Sorry about my absence! I kept thinking of writing an essay here, only to find myself so overwhelmed that I never got around to it.
But now I’m on the mend from a recent knee surgery, and have lots of time at home alone to catch up on all the writing I’ve been wanting to do. There might even be another essay out to you all before the end of the year! Who can say? Certainly not me.
Anyway, today I’ve got a story about a couple of rejections I’ve experienced lately. Enjoy!
Recently, I was rejected for a fellowship I really wanted.
I had agonized over the application for days, making sure that I was answering every question with a balance of informative and entertaining answers. I emailed someone on the decision committee, confirming that I was qualified (I was, perfectly so). Despite knowing that hundreds of people applied and they’d only be picking ten, I felt confident that I would be one of the lucky ones. The fellowship granted each recipient $7000 and everyone would be partnered with a mentor, something I’ve always wanted for my writing career (the mentorship; though, you know, the $7000 would also have been a dream). Usually when I experience rejection, I can rationalize it as, ‘well I didn’t really want that’ or, ‘well it was a reach anyway.’ This was neither; I wanted it badly and I could enthusiastically check every box on the list of qualifications.
I don’t say this to elicit pity. The people they chose are also talented writers, podcasters, and artists. Each is eminently qualified for this fellowship, and when I looked over the list of recipients, I could see why they had been the ones to make the cut. I’m truly excited to see how the grant benefits each of them and their art.
I think I wanted to write about this not to toot my own horn (a la, “look how mature I am, clapping for the winners while I lose!” *eye roll*) but because I think for a long time rejection was my worst fear. Maybe that’s funny for a person with a whole newsletter titled “Collected Rejections.” I take my irony with a pickleback, thanks.
There are so many opportunities that passed me by because I just didn’t apply. Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten them, who can say? But I will never know because I never tried. This reluctance to speak up for myself, to not at least try came sometime in late high school and early college. I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment it started, but I think that, like most things in life, it didn’t have a singular origin story. Not that I haven’t tried to solve it:
Why I Stopped Trying, a List of Potential Sources (excerpted from the bursting Notes app on my iPhone)
Socialization—girls, in The South especially, are encouraged to be quiet and simply accept what comes to them, rather than go after things, because that’s ambition, and ambition is reserved for men
PTSD after sexual assault—pretty self-explanatory
High school & college workload-induced exhaustion
A sense of purposelessness that led me to constantly question what I wanted at every turn
All girls seem to go through this, starting as early as elementary school??? Study after study talks about the problem of girls who stop speaking up in class and dumb themselves down, and the reasons! are! myriad!
Depression!
Nevertheless, I think I’m just glad that I didn’t allow the rejection to send me spiraling, questioning the value of my work, of my talent, of me.
I think here is where a lot of “self-help gurus” would say some shit about how your sense of self-worth has to come from within and can’t rely on external validation. You have to just “believe in yourself,” somehow. Everyone else’s opinion is pointless.
Here’s my much more nuanced (and therefore untweetable/less popular take):
Believing in yourself with no external validation is fucking hard—perhaps impossible—especially in a world that profits on your insecurities.
Where would you get the words and emotional strength to believe in yourself it it’s constantly been denied you? Where would you learn that in a complete vacuum of validation?
We learn confidence and resilience by seeing it modeled by others. Whether we see it on TV or in our parents’ relationships or between friends, we know what it looks like after seeing it somewhere. We can’t experience something that we don’t know exist. And it works best when we have someone showing us how to do it for ourselves.
We are all more emotionally stable and confident when we have people rooting for us.
Humans are not solitary creatures, we depend on our communities. We need each other. Whether you believe in evolution or intelligent design or something else, the basics are still the same: Humans are not built to go through life alone.
Can that be scary? Yes.
Can it be hurtful? Sometimes.
Can it be euphoric? Absolutely.
The only reason that rejection didn’t depress me is because I had so many other people in my life telling me my work is good, telling me there will be another fellowship, another application, another chance. I only ever had the guts to apply in the first place because people—friends, family, strangers—had taken the time to tell me how much they loved my work. That same encouragement helped me feel okay when the rejection notice pinged into my inbox.
A few months ago, I was very aggressively applying for jobs in marketing. I was feeling professionally restless, and truly exhausted by the way guests treat me at work—the service industry has always been hard, but people have become truly monstrous lately. I probably applied to three jobs a day, on top of working two jobs. It was exhausting, and I never heard back from about 95% of them.
But there were two that I landed interviews for. Both were for Content Marketing Specialist roles at museums, which is basically the lowest rung on the professional social media ladder. No problem—I was just excited to get paid to talk about art and history, and to also be allowed to sit down at a desk and not be screamed at by someone because I wouldn’t let them bring iced tea into an art museum.
I submitted the same résumé and almost identical cover letters. In the interviews, they both asked similar questions. I had great conversations with both interviewers.
I heard back from both about 24 hours apart.
One came back and told me I was under-qualified. The other said I was over-qualified.
Let that sink in: Same title, same description, same low salary, same city, same industry, same résumé, (nearly the) same conversation… completely opposite results.
I was disappointed for about five minutes… then I realized how absolutely bonkers the situation was.
How could I be both over- and under-qualified for the same job?
I have some friends that work in marketing and I reached out to them, asking what the hell I should take away from this. They didn’t have résumé advice or say anything about my cover letter or my interview. They sighed and said, “Yeah, that happens.”
Because content marketing, social media marketing, was so recently called “new media marketing.” When I was in college in 2008-2011, the marketing degree didn’t even require a class on social media because they hadn’t figured it out yet. (I remember, I checked back then.)
They still haven’t.
The industry still hasn’t figured out what the fuck it means to be a ‘Content Strategist’ or a ‘Content Specialist’ or anything else yet. The tiles and responsibilities aren’t standardized the way other jobs are, like teacher/principal or physician’s assistant/surgeon.
I couldn’t quite believe it. But it makes sense: It’s only been 8 years since Instagram launched ads. (The first one was for a Michael Kors watch in November 2013.) Sure, companies had a presence on social media before that, but I remember watching the progression from retail companies ignoring social media to going all in with bemusement. It seems that, like lots of people, a lot of marketing departments thought the internet would just… go away and they’d never have to worry about it.*
Until they suddenly did.
And we were off to the races.
But in the grand scheme of things, eight years really isn’t long enough to standardize roles in an industry. So maybe it shouldn’t surprise me that hiring managers are typing out jumbles of words like “Lead Content Marketing Strategist for Social Media” and having truly no idea what that actually… means. Because no one seems to really know what it means.
Let’s play a game. Before you read on, take a deep breath and try to puzzle out what you think that job title means.
Lead Content Marketing Strategist for Social Media
Really, I’ll still be here.
For extra fun, play some elevator music:
Got your idea? Okay.
In my head, that jumble of words breaks out to: Lead • Content Marketing • Strategist • for Social Media. It’s kind of like: Hierarchy • Department • Specific Responsbility • Sub-Department.
If I see that title, I assume that means that they’re looking for someone who can lead a team making video and written content on specific platforms, who will probably report to a Manager or Director of Marketing. They’ll strategize campaigns across every platform the company uses, probably with input from another Strategist. I’d assume they would have nothing to do with any blogging or longer form content that the company might create.
But I’ve seen that title while job-hunting and read descriptions that were for a videographer, or a copy editor, or a blogger, and often for someone working completely alone… Which are several different jobs all together.
I say all this because I know I’m not the only person out here feeling like they’re banging their head against the virtual wall of the job market. It’s tough out there, and it’s tougher if you’re working in a relatively new industry like social media where job descriptions aren’t clear cut.
Sometimes a rejection for a job isn’t about you or your qualifications. I learned that when I interviewed for two completely identical jobs and was told two completely opposite responses.
Sometimes it’s that the company actually doesn’t know what the hell they’re looking for. They think they need someone who can do x, y, z, but they actually need someone capable of l, m, n, o, p.
Sometimes it’s that the title or description was bad and all your due diligence in the world couldn’t change the fact that they called something a lead position when you’re the only member of the “team.”
Sometimes it’s that the whole industry hasn’t completely figured itself out yet and that’s not on you.
You just have to shake it off and apply for another job.
*My favorite hilariously wrong prediction of the internet? It is, blessedly, preserved on the internet for all to read, but here’s a quote:
“The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works. […] How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore…. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”
That’s it from me today. I’d love to hear about a time you experienced rejection and what it taught you.
Have you checked out my new podcast, Unruly Figures? It’s gotten pretty popular already, and I’ll be announcing some exciting news related to it in the new year.
You can also listen to Unruly Figures on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts.
Wherever you are, I hope you’re having a peaceful holiday season. I’ll be in Los Angeles (I am not going through LAX on crutches) drinking hot chocolate by myself so if you need a friend on Christmas, send me a DM.
As always, please wear a mask and try to not get Omicron. I’ve been re-watching Futurama and enjoying the dark humor of an invasion of Earth by someone from Omicron Persei Eight; I recommend it, if you can laugh through the existential panic of beginning year three of COVID.
