The Mycenaean

The months of February, March, and April can be hard on some high schoolers; they can get cut from spring sports teams, rejected from college, or even turned down by a potential prom date.

While this “rejection season” can hurt the pride of many high school students, it’s important to understand that there are ways to move through it. 

First, take the time to feel your feelings. It’s normal to be sad, angry, hurt, etc., especially if you put a lot of effort into something like a college application or a sports tryout. 

Acknowledging how rejection made you feel is the primary step in moving past it. However, prolonged depressive feelings can be harmful to mental health, and people should seek help if they can’t bring themselves back to feeling normal. 

Although it seems hard to do, a big part of getting through rejection is thinking about the cause of it logically. Rejection can stem from an array of reasons, and not all of them are necessarily the fault of the person who got rejected.

If somebody got rejected from a college, it could very well be that they didn’t have the resume to get into said college. However, it also could be because they didn’t fit the demographic quota the college had to fulfill for that school year. 

Colleges are, in essence, businesses, and businesses are typically going to act in their best interests. If you do receive that rejection letter from your dream school, just know it could truly be them, not you. 

Spring sports are another area of rejection. Nobody likes getting that talk, call, or slip of paper saying they were cut from the team they tried out for, and it’s understandable. 

It definitely could be that your skills as a player aren’t the best in the talent pool, but that doesn’t mean you should give up; keep your head high and train harder for the next season. 

Despite that, there could be reasons unrelated to your skill and work ethic that barred you from making the cut. You could play a position that the team already has filled; the roster could be too large to take new players, or the team could have ineffective leadership, leading to a lack of creativity and talent placement. 

A third area of rejection is drastically different than the first two, but contributes to rejection season all the same: prom dates. 

Prom is historically a dance attended by couples. In recent years it has become more common to just attend the dance with groups of friends, but there’s still a large percentage of the student population that goes with dates–which leaves open the possibility for rejection. 

If you decide to ask someone to prom and things don’t turn out your way, it’s best to handle it with grace. Causing a scene isn’t going to help anybody, and there’s a good chance it will make the situation worse. 

It already takes a massive amount of courage to ask somebody to prom that you aren’t already talking to or dating, so give yourself some credit for being brave. Most people have specific preferences for the people they like, so even though it’s hard, try not to take it personally. You could be the most perfect peach in the box, but the person you asked could like apples instead, and that’s just fine.

Rejection season is a hard time for high school students, and rejection can come from a variety of places. It’s important to remember that there are ways to move through and to always keep your head held high.