Dear Teens Crushed by College Rejections: Twitter Wants You to Know It's OK
‘Tis the season, y’all. No, not just the festive one — ’tis also the season of soul-crushing college rejections! Some of the most renowned U.S. schools are sending our their Early Decision acceptances and rejections this week, and if you’re the parent of a high school senior, you may likely be feeling the stress — and the potential loss — just as much as your kid is. But for those teens currently opening the dreaded Small Envelope Of Doom, Twitter has stepped up to remind you: It’s not the end of the world.
A powerful, often hilarious, and always reassuring Twitter thread on the topic of college rejections surfaced this week courtesy of Billions showrunner Brian Koppelman, and plenty of successful, good-at-adulting adults — from writers to tech folk to celebs — are coming out of the woodwork to confess their own past college admissions rejections.
The message to today’s teens? Life is SO much more than your “dream school.”
The list of decidedly non-loser people weighing in on how their own college rejections did everything but end their career dreams runs the gamut — from Hollywood folks like Mike Birbiglia to journalists such as Helen Rosner.
But perhaps the most delightful (and the most cheekily “F you, Academia”) response is that of iconic actor and humanitarian Mia Farrow, who tweeted, “I didn’t even go to college and I’ve had a wonderful life.” Damn straight she has.
While yes, it’s worth arguing that the importance of having a college degree has likely grown since Farrow was a teen choosing to forgo that route, we may also be approaching a tipping point at which the workforce is so saturated with college degrees that they’ll actually matter less and less. Then there’s the fact that the cost of college is rapidly skyrocketing, pushing more kids and families to find other ways to pursue their career dreams (see: Sean Hatosy’s tweet about finding acting work faster because he wasn’t in school).
Bottom line? Heed what our nation’s once and forever Dad said: “I have no idea where most of the people who worked for me went to college,” he — President Barack Obama, that is — confessed at a tech conference in Salt Lake City this year. “I just know: Did they get stuff done or did they not?”
Dearest dejected teens: We know you get stuff done. And you’ll continue to get stuff done, regardless of where — or if — you attend college. Obama and Farrow say so.
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