When the best of the best are not the best

If you happened upon this article as your roommate used the cover of the Prince to mop up the puddles of her spilled milk from the dining hall table or you pulled it off the desk of the kind woman scanning your prox as you returned for your third ice cream, then I assume that at one time you received an email that flaunted a hearty “Congratulations! You have been accepted to Princeton University.” In an uplifting commencement address soon after, you were told that you were the best of the best, the cream of the crop, in the top 5 percent of everyone you’ve ever met in your entire life. So let me reiterate, congratulations! If the email you received on some spring afternoon however long ago didn’t bear these words and you were forced to attend some less reputable university, the likes of Harvard or Yale, my sincerest condolences for coming across this article. Clearly you get our paper with the sole intention of lining the crate of your poorly trained Labrador while muttering words like “pretentious” and “Brooks Brothers” or some unprintable vulgarity.

But let me tell you, you poor rejected soul, that I, too, have felt the sting of rejection. Twice, in fact. Within the very gates of the school that told me I was good enough, I discovered that I maybe wasn’t good enough. In those first few weeks of the school year, I became a sad member of the many disappointed freshmen turned away by student organizations.

There are approximately 300 student groups on campus, and, of those, a fairly large number require auditions to join their ranks. They threw flyers during the Activities Fair and trumpeted their “fun” tryout. No experience? No problem! Everyone can be a dancer or singer or debater or writer or volleyball player. So you practiced and you prepared and you were ready to be the most active member of every club on campus. You were great on your high school team/club/group, so surely you could not fail now. If it was something entirely new, well, you’d compensate for that lack of experience with your general excellence. They’d be begging you to be their star rookie.

Then, not too long after, you received the kindly-worded email that there was just no room for your talents this year. And, all of sudden, you realized that you were not the best. After clutching your heart and motioning toward your roommate for a glass of water, or perhaps something stronger, it hit you: You’d been rejected. No one told you about this part. Give me a moment to entirely encompass the Princeton stereotype here and say that we’re used to excelling at the things we do. Rejection is a foreign concept.

Yet of the 12 people in my entryway we amassed a woeful 14 rejections. My roommate, with the pipes of Adele and the soul of Beyonce, was turned away from the a cappella groups. The guy from across the hall with a leg so stanky and a dougie so untaught that I wonder if he provides the material for these poor, catchy raps, was turned away from every dance group.

But after a little time and too much wallowing to the mind-numbing sounds of dubstep, the sting of rejection has worn off, and we have since let our bitter resentments go. The truth is we’ve all moved on to other things. Our rejections nudged us and pushed us and forced us towards new possibilities. The singer has become a stepper. The dancer has become a writer. All of sudden, we’re good at things far from our old comfort zones and far from those activities that graced our applications last fall. I know I sound like the typical doting mother, championing the “blessing in disguise” mantra, but I’m watching as downtrodden souls find life in something, pursue passions previously unknown, and I start to think that Princeton, this always-one-step-ahead place of ours, was meant for these types of lessons.

Rejection is not failure. Instead, it is a challenge, and we would not be here if we weren’t looking for a little challenge. In that hazy thing called “real life” (you know, that realm outside this Orange Bubble) there will be, I hate to admit, those who are better than we. And, yes, there may even be disappointments. But we will have the drive of Princetonians, and that vigor comes as much from the competitive nature of the student organizations as the academics. We’ve been rejected but not defeated.

So I’m not bitter, you two clubs which I shall not name to save you from the hostility of my readership. I’m thankful. Watch the singer step and the dancer write. Watch the violinist debate and the soccer player act. Watch us excel at something we would have never imagined. Just watch.