Rejection and Failure: The Great Molders of Men
Well, it’s been quite the weekend! On a macro level, I babysat my 5 younger sibilings for the weekend while my parents were on vacation (I have another sister who’s 20 and serving a mission for our church in Washington State…if you ever read this S, I love ya and I’m super proud of you!).
I really gained a lot of appreciation for parents and their patience as I tended to my 7 and 6 year old sisters, who unseridiptiously (no, it’s not a word) came down with fevers. I now know how to:
- help crying and sick children at all hours of the night, including fetching lots of water with ice (made that mistake more than once haha) and walking through deep breathing techniques,
- sleep with them to then be subsequently kicked out and sleep on the floor,
- and that Disney Plus’s kids tv show Lion Guard actually isn’t half bad…among other things.
In all seriousness, I love my family and was happy to lend a hand and spend time with my sibilings — they are all awesome and unique in their own way (saying “in their own way” might be redundant but you get my point).
Moving Back…
Moving on to rejection and failure (or should I say “moving back” haha), this weekend also had plenty of opportunity for elements of logotherapy (thank you Viktor!).
(DISCLAIMER)
~~~Before I continue on, I do have to give the disclaimer that I have a very blessed and comfortable life. There are many out there who do not have the same privileges and opportunities that I have. I am aware and mindful of what is happening in Afaganistan with the Taliban right now, as well as the other natural disasters in the world. My heart truly goes out to them — having your rights, homes, government, or family members stripped from you as well as all other terrors to come are not comparable to anything I go through. This said, I do believe everyone should be validated, to a reasonable extent, for their their hardships despite the level of legit hardship (if legit hardship was on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 would be Jeff Bezos getting his favorite t-shirt stolen and 10 would be the Taliban taking over your country and taking away all your rights). My point is that I think if this happened to Jeff, one should say to him: “Dang man, that really stinks. I know you wore that shirt on July 5, 1994, when Google says you founded Amazon and that it meant a lot to you. That stinks.” I then think that appropriate response from JB (not Justin Bieber) would be: “Yeah it does stink. It was important to me. Thankfully there are much worse things in life and I have $160,000,000 in Amazon Stock that I could sell to buy myself another t-shirt” (the real question here is if he wears the Amazon Basic clothing line..hmmm). ANYWAY…I totally got off on an irrational hypothetical there sorry, but my point is that it is human to want something to sympathize with you after a hardship, and I think as decent human beings, we should always recognize this. ~~~
So if you read the article on why I started blogging the first place (and if you haven’t click here) you’ll know that I was waiting to hear back on whether I’d get an offer for next year’s summer internship (which then leads to my full-time job) and that there was a girl.
The Girl
I’ll start with the girl (since returning home from Italy in June of 2020 I’ve been on dates with about 40 girls and have been interested in three, this girl is one of three). In short, I did find the guts to call her — because she’s one of the three — and the next day she came out to eat with a few close friends and me — I had met her close friends a few days earlier. I asked her out on another date, I tried to call, but she didn’t respond, so I had to text, and text is a horrible form of communication for stuff like this. On Friday morning, she hadn’t gotten back to me for over a day and later that day she told me that while she loved spending time with my and wanted to continue to hang out, that she was talking a lot to another guy and said that it would be disingenuous to keep going out with me when she had interest in this other guy. I replied saying that I appreciated her being upfront and honest, that her response was totally reasonable, that I thought she was an amazing person and to let me know if anything changes/if she wants to hang out. So, yeah that stinks but life goes on.
The Interview
Friday morning, while I was happily working on my model for SoFi (super cool company) semi-effectively keeping my oft-deep thinking mind occupied, I checked my Gmail. As soon as I saw the subject of the first unread email, Goldman Sachs — IBD Application Update, I knew it wasn’t going to be good because if you get the offer, they always call (they also sometimes call just to reject you, found that out the hard way @MorganStanley). Already knowing the response, I left clicked the email and let my eyes gloss over what my mind had already inferred.
There was sweat that threatened to leak from my eyes but I contained it. There’s really nothing like working as hard as you can to achieve a goal and then not reaching it. This feeling, unfortunately, and fortunately, is no stranger in my headspace nor my heart. I fail all the time, and funnily enough, it never feels that great.
I dropped to my knees and offered up a prayer (I’m a pretty religious dude if you don’t know me/haven’t read enough of my posts yet). Throughout this whole process, I have been extremely prayerful in telling God that I want to dedicate all time and talents to him and that if it was his will, I would love to get one of these internships. So, I thanked God for the opportunity to be in the position that I was in and told him I had complete trust in his plan for me.
I then called/texted a few family and friends and then went to the gym. (I actually ended up having a super impactful/interesting conversation with this guy that decided to walk on the treadmill next to me… but I’ll have to get into that another time).
But wait, there’s more!
Later, I get a text from the BYU recruiter who helped me throughout the whole process (actually an incredible guy), and he tells me my feedback from my interviewers.
He texts: “Getting feedback doesn’t seem like you dropped the ball or did anything wrong. Simply the wrong demographic/gender.”
So holy brutal, the reason I didn’t get the offer wasn’t that I didn’t explain CAPM as clearly as I could’ve, or that I came off too cocky or arrogant. Nope. I didn’t get it because I’m a white male. It’s a tough pill to swallow because there’s nothing I can do about that (I mean, I’m like 20% Italian, that should count for something, right?). Furthermore, I see a girl post on LinkedIn about how she got an offer, and her resume has almost no finance experience and a sub-par GPA. Now, I understand the reason and importance of hiring a diverse group of people. I understand that there is a push to get more women into finance, and I am on board with it — I think it is a really good thing. It doesn’t, however make it any less tough that the reason you didn’t achieve a goal you’ve been working towards for a long time is because of the color of your skin and your gender. It’s something that is completely outside of my control. Much can be discussed on this topic, but I will suffice in stating simply, it’s tough.
A quick word on empathy
I will say this experience of getting rejected for my gender/race has helped me understand, though in a very small way, what it must have felt like/still feels like for women and other minorities to be rejected or cast out because of their gender/race, because for most of history it has been this has been the case. I feel like I’m able to understand, just a little more, the feelings of unfairness that these groups feel and have felt for thousands of years. And again, it’s on a very, very small scale.
My one qualm
And again, I understand the importance of hiring a diverse class, and at the end of the day, they will hire who they want to hire. My only qualm with diversity is seeking it at the expense of quality, and by quality, I mean people who are doing IB because they love it, they are interested and curious and not there for the money. As society continues to evolve (whether it’s progression or regression might be up for debate) it will be interesting to see how firms weigh the pros of diversity against the pros of quality. In theory, one should take the best candidate for the job no matter what the gender or color of skin. But then the argument is that they are getting the best candidates because they need to diversity to connect to a broad range of clients given that banking is a client-facing business. So there is definitely a good argument for each angle, and I don’t know that answer nor what will happen. I am curious, though, and I’m working on forming my own concrete opinion.
Wrap up: Stepping stones or stones of stumbling?
How we react to failures and rejections shapes our character. They shape who we are deep down and who we will become. The stone you step on to get across the river is the same one you can stumble on and fall into the water. It’s up to you where you place your foot.
This story is to be continued. Things will work out.
Rejection and failure are the great molders of men.
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