February 4, 2019
By Jake Fernandes and Maia Hahn-Du Pont
T’is the most stressful time of year—at least for students applying to college. Their biggest worry? Rejection from schools. And it just so happens that there has been an entire wall at Lexington High School dedicated to displaying rejection letters.
The Wall of Rejection is an integral part of LHS culture, but it’s at risk. Profanity has long made it unpopular with the school administration, and it’s easy to see how a wall of rejection letters could become toxic or disheartening. But that beat-up bulletin board is more than a rite of passage: it means the world to a huge part of the student body.
Every day, inspirational posters, painted rocks and newsletters tell us that it’s okay to fail. But we all know that’s lip service: The material realities of high school -- grading policies, GPA weighting and every agonizing moment of the college application process -- make very clear that failure is unacceptable. The Wall of Rejection is the only forum where failure is confronted and redefined in a healthy way.
On the Wall of Rejection, fellow students comment silly or supportive things on anonymous rejection letters, in something akin to a virtual group hug.
“It’s like this moment where people come together and support each other,” Nerea Garcia-Mariscal, a senior, said.
In addition to enabling students to confront failure, the Wall of Rejection helps break down dangerous assumptions. When we consume social media, we see carefully cultivated images of our peers’ lives: we see them when they look their best, when they are happiest and when they are most successful. We seldom see our peers struggle, which makes many of us feel that we are dealing with our problems by ourselves, or that we are the only people doing with them. The Wall of Rejection protects anonymity but reminds us that we are not alone.
Most fundamentally, the Wall of Rejection deconstructs the fantasies and flawed assumptions we have about college: that everybody gets into their dream school, that only a certain tier or type of college is acceptable and that high school serves only as a stepping stone. Many freshmen come into LHS with a college already in mind, a GPA they can’t envision falling below and impossible standards for themselves and their peers. It only gets worse as they become upperclassmen. By senior fall, college applications are all anybody talks about or thinks about. It’s a consuming, damaging mindset that the Wall of Rejection helps cut back against, reminding us that we will be happy wherever we end up, and that a letter doesn’t validate or invalidate our worth: “You are more than the college you attend” and “You will be happy wherever you end up” are common sentiments on the Wall. And in a process where students almost completely lack agency, the Wall of Rejection adds humor and a sense of reciprocity.
“The [Wall of Rejection] brings a comedic atmosphere to the stressful college decision process—there are a lot of puns or jokes about the colleges and deans of admissions,” Zach Hahn-Du Pont, an LHS graduate, said.
Yes, the comments can push the boundaries of what is school appropriate. And in recent years, ad hominem attacks, especially against legacy students, have worsened.
“The Wall [of Rejection] is meant for us to support each other, and we shouldn’t use it to tear each other down,” Yuliana Astorga-Licardie, a sophomore, said.
But even if we accept the inevitability of people misusing it, the Wall of Rejection helps far more than it harms. At the end of the day, it’s voluntary and anonymous. And most if all, it is a physical representation of some of our school’s best qualities: community, positivity and resilience.
Comments