Rejection

A young woman wrote an op-ed piece in today's New York Times about being rejected from some of the most elite colleges in the United States and that she tried not to let those rejections threaten her self esteeme.
The TIMES has a blogging section and I wrote the following in response to the article:

I have the distinction of being rejected by almost every dental school in the United States at least once, three years in a row. I decided to become a dentist at age 9 and refused to be dissuaded by rejection.
All of that said, I won the AACD Smile Contest in 1998, I created the world’s first esthetic center within a dental school, am nationally recognized for my work and am up for promotion to associate clinical professor.
Rejection is not easy nor does it make us happy. Failure is the beginning point on the road to success and with some persistence and determination, that journey will result in the desired outcome. I have used my repeated rejections as a way to motivate myself to pursue excellence to demonstrate to those that rejected me that they were wrong in their decisions.
And I am a better dentist for those rejections.

Some of us are very fortunate in that we have the personalities to turn negatives into positives as a force for moving forward. I have no idea whether this is because of genetics or parental upbringing. All I know is that I am happy to have the ability to pick myself up off of the canvas after being knocked down. As my Father used to say, "You have to roll with the punches."

If this is the result of parenting......"Teach your children" as the Crosby, Stills and Nash song goes.