Rejection isn’t the Worst Thing
[my memere: an ancestor who teaches me about courage daily]
One of the things that I think students of all stripes (but particularly students new to high school, undergrad and grad school) struggle with is rejection. At some point in our lives we all go from being the smartest kid in the class, to that person struggling to wrap our head around some especially difficult material. For those of us who spend the majority of our youth self-defining around our academic ability, this moment can be particularly heart-breaking/wrenching.
My moment of academic humility came during my first year in graduate school. The material was so difficult, the course load was so heavy, and my peers were so intellectually sophisticated that I felt totally out of my league. The rejection was constant as I struggled to achieve academically, socially and personally.
Eventually though, I made it through my course work, my exams and even my dissertation proposal, and suddenly I found myself facing the mountain that is my dissertation. I went into the data collection process expecting to struggle. But surprisingly designing interview protocols and collecting the stories and experiences of black women living below the poverty line turned out to be a major source of joy in my life.
For the first time in five years I found myself waking up with a sense of excitement about my days work. It’s funny because everyday as I would head out to work, my partner at the time, as well as other family members would express worry and concern. In retrospect, I guess their fears were legitimate, I was working in a neighborhood where the rate of violence was 200% higher than the rest of the city.
But I never had any problems. I found that encountering so much rejection during my graduate school years had a profound effect on me. Those previous four years deeply humbled me, and it enabled me to approach each woman I interviewed with the deepest sense of care and respect. I entered my data collection process feeling like a regular girl from Detroit. I didn’t think of myself as particularly special or talented, because I’d spent the last couple of years coming face to face with my own short-comings.
What I found, as I collected all that data and started writing the stories therein, was that my humility and my desire to serve is the thing. It’s the thing that makes me special and it’s the thing that I have to offer both my academic and interpersonal communities. Ultimately, as I enter my last year of graduate school. I find myself exceptionally grateful for the twenty-two years I’ve spent in educational institutions of all shapes and sizes. Specifically, the rejection I encountered in graduate school has made me brave, resilient and mature in a way that I wasn’t when I first arrived in Chicago at twenty-two.
At the end of the day, it turn’s out, rejection isn’t the worst thing.
#30WriteNow
Alex Moffett-Bateau / Prof MB (she/they) holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago and BA in political science + African American Studies from the University of Michigan. She is an assistant professor of political science at the City University of New York. Their research and writing focus on extra-systemic and subversive politics. Her manuscript in progress argues, in order to accurately understand the political engagement of Black women living in poverty, a fundamental expansion and redefinition of what is considered, “political” is needed. Prof MB is a public speaker, consultant, and podcaster. She is a political knowledge worker whose focus is on Black feminist + disability justice political education. Prof MB is originally from Detroit and now makes her home in New York City.
Leave a Reply