Every Teenager Should Read Joan Didion’s “On Being Unchosen by the College of One’s Choice”

Rejection is — and most likely will always be — a tough pill to swallow, especially when you’re seventeen and conditioned by the school system (particularly a private prep school like Sequoyah) to believe that it will ruin your entire future. 

What I am talking about here is the greatly anticipated and dreaded college application process that leads to the impending panic of an acceptance/rejection letter–something that rules the lives of the majority of American children. It feels like there is this intense need to prove oneself during the application process, to prove how smart you are, how interesting you are, how creative you are, and how you’re spending all your time trying to make the world a better place while also taking 7 advanced classes and maintaining a 4.9 GPA. The “personal essay” component is a sales pitch for who you are at an age where you can’t possibly know yet who you are. To be rejected from college feels like a punch in the face that has barely grown into itself. 

I’m a junior, so I have not yet applied to or been rejected from the college of my choice but the thought of it terrifies me. During these last couple of weeks I have become addicted to watching videos that people post on Tik Tok of them opening their college decision emails (a new viral trend that probably warrants its own article) and either screaming with the joy of validation or pretending to be okay while their parents pity them in the background. Imagining myself in that position is on the list of my worst nightmares. Or at least it was until I found this essay by Joan Didion titled “On Being Unchosen by the College of One’s Choice,” recently republished in her new book of collected works Let Me Tell You What I Mean. 

In the essay, Didion recounts the story of being rejected by her top choice college, Stanford, and reflects upon her feelings about it, her parent’s feelings (or lack thereof) about it, and what being rejected from college really means to a seventeen-year-old. It is surprisingly funny and, although written in 1968, still stunningly relevant. She compares the attitude towards college in the early 1950s (the time that she was applying) with the late 1960s (the time the essay was published.) It’s interesting to see how the climate has changed since then, but also how the essential toxicity has remained unscathed. It’s also selfishly comforting to know that even my icon, the great Joan Didion, didn’t get into the college of her choice. She teaches us that where one goes to college, or even if one goes to college at all, isn’t as dire as we are sometimes led to believe. One’s life will unfold in its own time. 

I feel as if I owe it to the Sequoyah community to share this inspiring piece with you: 

On Being Unchosen by the College of One’s Choice 

By Joan Didion 

Appeared in The Saturday Evening Post April 16, 1968

“Dear Joan,” the letter begins, although the writer did not know me at all. The letter is dated April 25, 1952, and for a long time now it has been in a drawer in my mother’s house, the kind of back-bedroom drawer given over to class prophecies and dried butterfly orchids and newspaper photographs that show eight bridesmaids and two flower girls inspecting a sixpence in a bride’s shoe. What slight emotional investment I ever had in dried butterfly orchids and pictures of myself as a bridesmaid has proved evanescent, but I still have an investment in the letter, which, except for the “Dear Joan,” is mimeographed. I got the letter out as an object lesson for a 17-year-old cousin who is unable to eat or sleep as she waits to hear from what she keeps calling the colleges of her choice.
Continue reading here: https://wowwritingworkshop.com/on-being-unchosen-by-the-college-of-ones-choice/