Wishing You the Best In Your Future Endeavors
Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love rejection letters
Hi (No) Wonder-ers,
Not to brag or anything, but I’ve become quite well-practiced at the art of handling rejection. You name it, I’ve had a rejection: high schools, colleges, medical schools, graduate schools, job applications, friend groups, crushes… so much rejection.
My life is a rejection fetishist’s wet dream.
I have the text of every rejection letter I ever received permanently burned into my memory, and it goes something like this:
“Dear Merrit, thank you for your interest. We regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you a position, but wish you the best in your future endeavors. Sincerely, So-And-So”
As a connoisseur of fine rejections, having experienced many of the course of decades, I have noticed that today’s rejections are different from those of yesteryear. Specifically… for the last ten years or so, rejection letters have largely been replaced by radio silence. So instead of learning about a rejection through a clearly articulated communication, prospective applicants are now left to arrive at this conclusion once they realize they haven’t heard anything in months. So now that “ghost” is a verb, and now that ghosting has supplanted clear communication in the professional zeitgeist, rejection letters are like payphones – quaint reminders of a bygone era.
Why can’t we be bothered to take five seconds to communicate our rejection to a party that, for better or worse, has taken an interest in us? To make a long story short: we as a society handle rejection so poorly – and often litigiously – that we’ve stopped documenting it altogether. Hence the no-rejection-letter thing.
This came as a bit of a culture shock to me, someone whose mother instilled the importance of conveying rejection clearly, with grace and aplomb. Mom taught us that conveying a clear decision, even an unfavorable one, shows a modicum of respect and consideration for the other person, their time, and their effort.
Being a 6”6” 280 lb white, cisgender, heterosexual man who has never had to fear violent reprisal related to rejecting another person, I am in no position to tell more vulnerable people how to best to convey rejection. Nor am I here to say that ghosting is categorically, indefensibly bad, nor that the other person is always owed an explanation or feedback into the decision-making process. Every situation, and every involved person, is different. Everyone responds differently to rejection, and to the various ways of delivering it.
However, whether we clearly articulate our rejection decision, or simply ghost, the other person will eventually know where we stand. We might be able to delay the other person experiencing the sting of rejection, but we can’t spare them entirely. The interval of ghosting doesn’t lessen the pain of rejection – if anything, it increases the pain. The dish of rejection tastes no better served cold than it does served warm. In this regard, ghosting often serves only to delay the inevitable.
The times may be changing, but I am still on Team Rejection Letter. As long as doing so doesn’t pose an undue risk, we should show enough vulnerability, courage, and consideration to convey rejection in a clear and definitive manner. Conversely, we also need to learn how to handle rejection in a productive, mature manner. Ghosting is not a disease, but a symptom of our collective societal ineptitude at handling rejection. We should really get on that. We need to learn how to reject and be rejected productively, with composure.
So unless there is an extenuating circumstance that requires ghosting, I regret to inform ghosting that I an unable to offer it my categorical support at this time… but wish it the best in its future endeavors.
Casper? Barely even knew her.
Merrit
Mark Travers
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563225000846