Writing consultant! That’s an awesome title, don’t you agree? Well, it’s the kind of title that comes along with working with the Writing Center of the school I attend – University of Houston – where I graduate from this Fall.
Anyways, I love writing, that’s for you who doesn’t know already! The aim was to do something before I graduate where my love for writing is put to use (and wouldn’t mind that it’s paid too) So when I heard about this opportunity at the Writing Center, through Sarayu, who was my Family Cluster Facilitator at LeaderShape, I was really stoked. I got back from LeaderShape and emailed them right away! And we fixed an interview date for a couple of days afterwards. This was in March. They told me to bring a sample of my writing, and I took along one which I wrote for my Literature & Medicine class. It was an awesome experience, I tell you. I even caught a glimpse of one of the interviewers reading the paper, and I could tell she was feeling it.
The interview was really incredible, and it went really well…as per the standard of how well an interview could possibly go. The questions that were asked were interesting, and I got the chance to answer them as honestly as I could. It was amazing! During the course of the interview I even got the chance to say a couple of lines that made the people doing the interview laugh. It really was amazing. I was asked about my future goals, my current goals, what lessons I’ve learned from experiences I penned down on my resume, etc. Awesome stuff like that! And after the interview, I shook hands with the three of them, and they informed me that they were going to email me about their decision.
I hadn’t even left there when I already started working my schedule for the Fall semester around it. I was really excited, and I was very confident I was going to get it.
So, good news and bad news…which would you like to hear first? Only the tricky thing though is that there is no bad news!
Ready?
I got an email from the Writing Center in the morning of June 19th. They informed me that they were really glad I did the interview with them AND that they didn’t have a position for me for the Fall. Awesome, right?
See what I did there? I put AND where maybe before now I would have put BUT! (This is something I learned from LeaderShape, either from Jose Estrada, or Vanessa, not sure! They said “Use AND instead of BUT…”)
Thankfully though, but is almost becoming extinct in my vocabulary arsenal nowadays…I don’t need it! At least not when one is thinking of endless opportunities.
I’m sure you’re probably thinking right now, this guy is a total idiot!!!? Who in the world writes in this manner about an opportunity they desperately want AND didn’t get? Well, you’re right, ME! However, I’m not alone though.
In his book, “Weird Ideas That Work” (which I just got in the mail a few days ago, *but only skimmed through) Robert Sutton says that we should reward our failures and successes but punish inaction.
Similar to that idea is this quote from Theodore Roosevelt (which I stole from Jeremy Gutsche’s “Exploiting Chaos”, another book I got in the mail a few days ago, *but only skimmed through)
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat – Theodore Roosevelt
So, see I’m not alone! It’s important to have tried, and failed than not try at all is the message. And hey, you get to learn one or two things along the way too. So bring out your most expensive glasses, open up that wine you’ve been saving for years because there is a huge cause to celebrate here…yeah, let’s toast to our failures – perceived or actual!
Juan, another awesome friend from LeaderShape told me that every NO (rejection; which is what we see them as) is a step closer to hearing that YES!
But before those YES-es? I say, it’s about freakin’ time we start celebrating them! – our failures that is.
And after you’ve gotten yourself drunk off of that wine, maybe you can listen to this song by Coldplay, called Lost! I’m sure Chris was drunk too when he wrote it, because what sober person says this:
Just because I’m losing, doesn’t mean I’m lost
And in the remixed version of the same song, which is called Lost+, Shawn Carter, the featured artist asks an all too important question, he says:
And the question is, “Is to have had and lost better than not having at all?”
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