Why It's Okay to Say "I Don't Know".

Hullo all!

Sorry for the odd posting time - I forgot to schedule anything for today, and seriously underestimated the toll that travelling took on me after yesterday. Couple that with a particularly strange dream regarding potions that require purple frogs being put through a blender, and you can see why I never quite got around to it.

But, here I am, safe and whole and back from interview at St Catherine's College, Oxford.

People have been asking me how it was all day, and none of them seem particularly amused by my answer. But I can't help it, because as pathetic as it is, it is the only way I can express how I felt about "how it went".

I don't know.

There's always a degree of uncertainty about things like this. Assessing one's own performance in something of high importance always leads to more than one's fair share of personal paranoia and memory blurring. Should I have said that? What will that tell them about me as a student? Is the way they replied indicative of their view of me? Am I meant to understand this question? Are they leading me on? Who is that strange figure in purple dancing before my eyes? Who turned out the lights?

To be honest, no matter how often people tell me - and I tell myself - that there's no use niggling away about what might or might not have happened, it's going to keep happening. Because it's important to me, and I know that if I get that rejection letter next month, then I know whose fault it will be. I will have failed, and I'll have no one to blame but my own mistakes.

Something might have felt like a horrible mistake to you, but that doesn't mean it did to someone else. Or that thing you're really bothered over? That might not actually be half the problem you think it was. Or maybe it's twice as big.

We don't know.

And that's okay.

If we knew everything, then life wouldn't be half the wonder it is - especially when it comes to the joys of prodding, poking and meowing at surprise birthday presents in a contest to see if you can work out what it is before opening it.

Sometimes things are, genuinely, in the lap of the gods, and we need to accept that. Especially in writing - there are so many subjective factors that might affect the agent's view of your pitch / the number of sales you get that day / whether or not your editor will spot that one squicky sentence in the middle of chapter three.

We can never foolproof ourselves against everything. Sometimes we just have to do our best, and then hope for the best.

Sometimes the wait makes the end result that little bit more exciting when it comes. What I'd give to see J. K. Rowling's reaction to that one acceptance letter after those string of rejections when she was trying to get that first Harry Potter book published.

W. Clement Stone once said: Aim for the moon, and even if you miss you'll land among the stars.

. . . Anybody want to share a seat in my catapult?

~ Charley R

Dealing with the Dodos of Rejection

I've not talked about it much, so it'll probably be news to the majority of you that I sent out my applications to five universities this October, and have since been waiting on their replies. Long before that, though, the school organised innumerable lectures and workshops and discussions preparing us to jump through the neccessary hoops with enough of a flourish in order to give us the best chance of success.

It's been long, and sometimes a bit traumatic - especially with regard to past exam results that really didn't go according to plan, as well as fears over lack of work experience and general feelings of personal inadequacy - but we're coming towards the time of year when the offers start coming back, and everything comes into a new perspective.

I've been very lucky.

Within two weeks of sending off my application, one of my top universities wrote back to me with a conditional offer of three A grades. I was ecstatic, not only because this offer was lower than most and well within my capabilities, but also because the university in question usually takes a decade and a half to get back to people. I was the first person in the year to get an offer.

This was followed a couple of weeks later by another offer, with even lower grade boundaries and - joy  of joys - an interest in the 6,000+ word essay I spent four weeks of my summer holiday slaving away over.

Then the pinnacle of my joy: a third offer, this time from one of my most coveted university places.

And then Oxford University called me for interview.

Angels on clouds of glory, sunbursts, supernovas and an en-masse singing of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' could not have dampened my spirits in that glorious moment.

My successes with the other universities gave me a momentous boost in confidence. Oxford were interested! Other universities were too! I was an attractive prospect! I was wanted! I could do this!

Then the fourth university came back. "Application Unsuccessful".

To be honest, it wasn't that big a blow. This university had been somewhat lower down on my scale of preference, and to be honest I'd already got three fantastic offers at my back, so this last one was hardly the end of the world.

The fact that the "doom on you!" chant from the dodos in "Ice Age" kept running through my head as I read the confirmation letter certainly didn't help the expected gravitas of the moment either.

However, I do not doubt that, had that rejection come earlier in the process, I would not have coped half as well as I did. University application was a prospect every bit as terrifying as sticking my head into the jaws of a dragon to hunt for tooth cavities, and at least the dragon wouldn't have destroyed my soul and confidence before ending my life.

Rejection itself is not the issue. It's the knock to confidence, to self-esteem, to the belief that what you are doing is the right thing. It's like waking up one morning to find your brand new bicycle has been stepped on by a rampaging gorilla, and being left to mourn over the mangled remains.

But rejection can only do this to you if you let it. You don't have to be a hard-shelled sarcastic pessimist who prepares themself for rejection even before they've set about the endeavour itself. If we don't hope for things, then not only are we ever unlikely to try for them, but we'll never understand the satisfaction of typerventilating your excitement to your friends over Skype.

Rejection may shut a door in your face, but it rarely thinks about the windows.

~ Charley R

Hang In There World!

First earthquakes, now tsunamis. Poor old Japan has taking a really horrible battering these past two days, and I pray to God the damage and loss of life is not too much for them to cope with, especially in this horrible global economic situation. I can't help but bite my nails and feel my eyes tingling when I hear reports of the damage and deaths that have struck the city since that monster of an earthquake shook the country up, and then yet more chaos as tsunamis smacked into the coastline.

But that's not all I'm worried about. I'm worried about the other countries too, the ones that have started evacuating people from the coastline because the quake may have sent yet more tsunamis in their direction. 

I'm scared.

I'm scared that Japan won't be able to cope with the horrific damage and loss of life these disasters are going to cause.

I'm scared that other places will be damaged too, places that can't afford to help themselves.

I'm scared that countries like Britain and the USA won't be able to help them because they barely have enough money to support their own economies.

I'm scared that people are going to get hurt, that they will lose their homes, livelihoods and loved ones and be left grief-stricken and destitute as their countries struggle to come to terms with the carnage.

And it's killing me that I can't do anything to help. Nothing physical that is - believe you me, if I could wave some sort of magic wand and repair all the damage, heal all the injuries and bring back all those who have been killed, I'd be waving like there was no tomorrow.

But I can't. 

All I can do is hope, pray and cross my fingers and wish with all my might that the nations of the world can, somehow, pull together and help each other through this terrible disaster.

Hang in there world! We can do it if we do it together!