Rejection

I apply for a bunch of awards and scholarships every year and usually end up with a giant stack of rejection letters and enough money to scrape by for the next year.  After awhile, I got pretty accustomed to the rejections and really didn’t get upset about them – just more and more concerned about how I was going to pay for school.

Today I got my first rejection letter for next year’s scholarships.  And I’m not going to lie, I’m actually really upset about not getting the Udall.  First of all, if you get the scholarship, you get to go to this awesome mini-conference with all of the other scholars.  And the scholars are fantastic – they come from so many different academic backgrounds and while everyone is interested in improving the environment, they all approach the problem differently.  Getting to hang out with people like that and maybe even work with them at some point would be AWESOME.

Secondly, it’s $5000 and I really need the money.  Tuition & fees keep going up and up and even though I’m not making more a year, my finaid is going down.  Really government?  It is not ok that I make below poverty level and my EFC is 20% of my income. NOT OK. And financial aid office, did you really just offer me a loan with an interest rate worse than my credit card?  Isn’t that illegal or something?

And third, I worked my little tail off on that application and put a good bit of heart into it, too.  Between working less and sending off for a gazillion transcripts from all the schools I’ve attended, I lost about $500 applying for this scholarship.  Not to mention I had a bunch of people help me edit all of the essays, and I feel like I wasted their time.

I put a lot into applying for the Goldwater last year, too, but wasn’t really that upset when I didn’t get it.  For some reason, this one just feels more personal.  Maybe because I wanted it so badly and worked so much on it – it’s not a good feeling knowing that your best isn’t good enough.