The second semester of high school is an exciting yet stressful time for Aliso Niguel seniors who are in the process of patiently waiting to receive their college acceptance letters. The suspense is heavy and many are very anxious about the possibility of potential rejection.
While many students get accepted into their dream schools, there are also a huge handful of students who did not get selected into their target. While most are likely accepted into other safety schools, this realization is a hard thing to process and accept. The weight of rejection can take a deep toll on confidence and stability.
College and Career Coordinator Mrs. Nguyen recognized this issue and decided to take action. “It is a hard thing as a life coach to watch young adolescents struggle to achieve their dreams. While achieving them at such a young age may not be possible in some scenarios, there are certain ways to overcome the insecurities that may come from rejection.”
Mrs. Nguyen was asked about her involvement in this program. This program, the Rejection Shredding Event, was an opportunity for students to shred their rejection letters from college in a paper shredder, symbolizing letting go of the past and looking forward to the future.
She says her reasoning for this event was “Closure. I think I wanted everybody to have closure, I wanted everybody to know that they are not alone. We saw everybody here shredding together and when you realize that everybody is getting rejected on some level you’re like ‘oh okay, yeah this is part of the process’. So I think making sure that people know that they’re not alone, making sure that there is an opportunity for closure for seniors, and an opportunity to be excited about their future too.”
Other students were questioned about how this event helped them. Josh Gilabard (12) says, “This event really helped me to get through the trauma that I have been through in high school and I really look forward to what is happening in the future in college after I leave Aliso Niguel.”
Sebastian (12) also says, “This event helped with getting rejections and dealing with them, cause you just go with it and keep moving on so it helped symbolically just going with it.”
From a student’s perspective, this event seemed to have greatly helped students realize that rejection can be dealt with positively and can open many new doors for one’s future. Rejection is redirection.
Mrs. Nguyen says she founded this event from “a counselor who did it at another school district and I was so inspired by her and this event that I wanted to bring it to our school because I thought it would be really helpful for students.”
Overall, this event helped create a positive mindset towards rejection and helped students move forward with a good attitude about the future.
