Rejected by Your Dream Study Course or Job? Here's What to Do

We’ve all been there. You pin your hopes on that one dream - the university degree you’ve been obsessing over, the shiny employer you’ve been imagining yourself working for, or the project you thought was the one.

You did everything “right”. You prepped, you applied, you crossed your fingers so hard you nearly lost circulation… and then, a letter arrives, late at night, and it’s a big, fat "no." Ouch.

It’s a gut punch, and it feels like all that excitement and energy, all that self-worth you’d tied to this one thing, has just been placed in the hands of a stranger who couldn’t care less.

And the first thing your brain does? It goes into that fight-or-flight mode.

Your brain has like these two settings: either you’re relaxed and everything’s good - you have food, shelter, you’re safe, you’re cool - or the opposite: you’re going to die soon, you’re in danger, things are fundamentally wrong.

And here’s the kicker: your brain can’t tell the difference between “I didn’t get into that course” and “someone’s chasing me with a club.” Stress from any situation feels the same to it.

You Are Not a Piece of Paper 📄

There's a valuable lesson in here, and it applies to us all... If you place all of your self-value, your self-worth, and your whole identity into a single outcome, you're setting yourself up for a fall.

A stranger on an admissions board or a hiring manager doesn't know you. They don't know your story, your drive, or your potential.

They're making a decision based on a piece of paper and a set of data points, not on you as a person.

The value of who you are, your identity, is yours alone. It should never be in the hands of someone else. Building a picture of what your life's going to be is a good thing, but it's a blueprint, not a rigid, unchangeable law. When it doesn't go to plan, it's going to hurt, yet it is absolutely not a reflection of your worth.

Because as I always say... your career (and your life) isn’t a neat, Hollywood-style “rise to the top” montage, where everything’s perfect, everything’s linear, and it all works out exactly as planned. It’s more like a messy road trip, with wrong turns, dodgy service stations, and unexpected detours that end up being way better than your original plan.

You might start off excited about one university, do 12 months of computer science and then find out this really isn’t for you. Or you might find something you love, can see yourself weaving through your future entrepreneurial dreams, and say, “Yeah, this is for me.” Either way, it’s totally normal to try different things, fail, and learn from those experiences. You don’t need to have it all figured out right now.

Your Brain Thinks You’re in Immediate Danger 🐅

That stress you feel right now isn’t just emotional - it’s primal.

Your brain’s fight-or-flight response doesn’t care if you’re stressing because you missed your target or because you literally have no food or someone’s trying to hurt you.

It just knows stress and wants to protect you. So yeah, it feels awful because your brain says, “I’m about to die.” But it’s just the brain doing its job. You can’t just will yourself out of that feeling. It’s got to run its course.

Sit with the Crap Feelings — Don’t Force the Positivity ✋

Here’s the thing: don’t try to force yourself into feeling positive straight away.

When you’re still stewing and feeling crap, telling yourself “It could be worse” or “Look on the bright side” just doesn’t help.

Let yourself be negative. Sit with those feelings. Give yourself some days to stew. Because the brain controls you right now, not the other way around. And that’s okay.

Once your primitive brain says, “Alright, we’re safe now,” your normal thought processes will come back.

You will start making sense of the new reality. It's so easy to feel like you've wasted a year of your life. But honestly? Thinking about your life as a linear, finite thing is a bit morbid and not very helpful.

Instead, start seeing this as an unexpected turn that gave you a new skill: dealing with rejection. Getting a "no" builds resilience. It teaches you to put your heart and soul into something, but also to hold on to the outcome gently.

You did everything you could, but you weren't the one making the final call. That's a powerful and humbling lesson. This bump in the road is simply giving you an opportunity to fuel your ambition and find a new way forward.

Your Growth Mindset Will Return — Just Give It Time 🚀

After that low period, maybe a week or two, you’ll start to shift back. You’ll stop dwelling on “what went wrong” and start thinking, “Okay, now what?”

You’ll find a new target, a new drive, a new project to focus on.

And that’s where your real growth begins. You don’t need to rush it or have it all figured out today. You can give yourself permission to “go with the flow” and see what comes next.

The Real World Cares About What You Can Do, Not Where You Started 🗺️

Remember, in the grand scheme of things, once you’ve had a couple of years’ experience, employers stop caring so much about where you went to uni, what your degree is or first job was.

They want to know one thing: “What can you do for us now? What evidence do you have you can do it well?”

So yes, it’s lovely to go to a great school or get that fancy job - it might open some doors at first - but it’s not the end of the road if you don’t. It’s all about what you can do, your skills, your attitude. That’s what matters.

The Goal Isn't the Job/University, It's the Life 🗺️

When you zoom out, you realise that the end goal was never to get into that specific university/job. That was just the next step.

The real goal is to build a life you're proud of, a career you enjoy, and to achieve the things you want to achieve.

If you got everything you wanted by the age of 21, what would you do for the next 70 years? A setback now just means you get to find another way to get there.

Maybe it'll take an extra year or two, but those years aren't wasted. They’re filled with new experiences and different opportunities you never would have found otherwise. There are literally infinite paths to where you want to go.

💬 Your Turn... What’s Your Story?

So, if you’re stuck right now in that fight-or-flight, “I can’t believe this happened” place, just sit with it. Don’t force positivity. Let yourself feel crappy for a bit. Then, when you’re ready, you’ll start thinking about what’s next, and you’ll get your drive back.

I’d love to hear about your own zig-zag career moments or setbacks that ended up leading somewhere good - drop me a comment or message and let’s talk about how life really works.

Have you ever faced a major rejection that completely derailed your plans? How did you deal with it?