There are two main types of people in the world. People who get discouraged from being told “no” and people who become motivated from being told “no.”
I am the latter, and I have been since I was a child. I have been performing since I was very young. I was in competitive gymnastics and dance; was learning music and acting; and went to Saturday school for mathematics and Mandarin Chinese. Being a small child involved in too many things, raised in an immigrant household with parents born in the 1950s– you bet your bottom I was being told “no” a lot. I learned early on that “no” was discipline. “No” meant that I was doing something wrong– that there was still something left to learn and improve on. It didn’t mean I was worthless, stupid or incapable of improving. “No” to me, meant I am supposed to know better, do better, be better.
When I attended graduate school for administration with a focus on nonprofit organizations, I learned that it is much easier to turn a “no” to a “yes” than a “yes” to a “no.” So it is no wonder why “no” is a more frequent answer in everyday life than “yes.” It is for that very reason that I never take “no” personally, or as a definitive answer. A person who says “no” to me today, can say “yes” to me a different day. This is truth especially in theatre. I’ve left countless auditions with a no, but greeted with a yes from the same director for a different, more suitable opportunity.
When I completed graduate school I spent approximately 5-months stuck in a postgraduate depression. No one ever told me that postgraduate depression was a thing. It was something that consumed me and I had to discover and understand on my own, completely blind. My graduate program had set me up with a lot of real-life hands-on experience that I wouldn’t have ever obtained on my own like creating a cultural food program literally from the ground up called “Taste of Taiwan” for Asia Society Texas Center with money granted from Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office. I assisted the rebranding and transition of leadership at Queensbury Theatre, formerly known as Country Playhouse, implementing a strategic social media marketing plan which more than doubled their online presence by the time my internship was over. Real, nitty gritty groundwork that resulted in legitimate success and fruitfulness which wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for my hard work and my passion to succeed– to surpass all the “no” that has thrown in my way throughout my lifetime. Still, after graduate school I began feeling like a small worker ant. Who cares if I did any of that? Did any of it even matter? I had been called the “poster child” of my graduate program– an overachiever who had been fortunate enough to never know failure. In the end, it all amounted to nothing.
After graduate school, I worked a thankless job in press media making $12 an hour with only 12 hours a week. Within that limited amount of time per week, I had to come up with three articles and a comprehensive list of events. No really, I had to come up with at least 150 new things to do around the city every single week. Did I mention I was also an editor? I drowned more than I swam. I needed an out without going back to retail and food. I refused to go back to those types of minimum wage jobs with a master’s degree even though I technically made more money waiting tables than I did being an editor. I finally landed an interview with a Fortune 500 company.
This was it. This was the place I wanted to be. A social media marketing manager for a company that made a computer software aimed for people who wanted to get into real estate. A baby company that had just started less than 5 years ago at the time. They were focused, on the road of success– and I was convinced I was going to get it. I landed the initial interview, and passed the second round which tested my skills in HTML/CSS; writing marketing blog posts; and email campaigns that will bypass spam filters. (Since we were selling something, email servers automatically sort that stuff out because of keywords used. I had a brief stint working for a third-party contracted by Google so I was already too aware of these things– but, I digress.) I passed the second round and found myself going to the third and final round of the interview. If I pass this, I got the job, I thought to myself over and over again on my way over to their office location. I got to meet the CEO of the company who was pretty young, probably in his mid-to-late thirties. The interview went swimmingly until he asked me– “Why should I hire you? You’re fresh out of graduate school with no real-world experience.” I froze and stumbled around for an answer. I had “real-world” experience from my graduate program but, the CEO would have none of it. He didn’t care about my brief stints here and there coordinated by my university– that was something I had to do to graduate, not something I accomplished on my own accord. He didn’t care about the marketing strategies and theories I knew because he knew the real results– the advantages and disadvantages of everything from doing it all in real life. How do I compare? What have I contributed to the world outside of what I’ve done in school? I word vomited all over his desk afraid that if I gave the impression of being hesitant or naive, it’d surely end me and the interview.
You just need to take a leap of faith. There’s nothing I can’t do that I put my mind to. I always want to improve, to be efficient, and the best. I’m an overachiever, and there’s no obstacle I cannot overcome.
Ageism is a real thing in this world and there’s nothing to combat it. To this day, I don’t know the “correct” answer to a question regarding lack of real-world experience. This is exactly why postgraduate depression is so real and such a heavy burden. When a student graduates, they are often in debt because of student loans with no “real-world experience” to help them land a decent job to pay the loans off. They start questioning themselves, their ability, even their intelligence. Even after spending thousands of dollars on a fancy piece of paper that says they know something, people too frequently disregard it anyway! I never got that job…they opted for someone with more experience (predictably, so). However, around the same time I got another gig working a play for a theatre company.
Theatre is humbling work. I could never make a living off of it unless I devoted my entire soul into it– and even then, I might not ever make it. A typical non-equity theatre job pays around $600 for three months of work, so you really have to love it to not mind the low pay. I’ve accepted it a long time ago. Theatre is not my hobby and I get offended when people try to say it is such. It is my life-long passion and my one true love. It is the only thing that makes me genuinely happy. It was through this theatre gig as a random crew member, changing the set in-between scenes for a show, that eventually led to my first full-time job as a legal clerk at a law firm for the next two years. I was referred by an actor– whose day job was a paralegal and his company needed a VERY immediate replacement. I dropped everything, applied, and pretty much quit my job as a part-time editor as soon as I was hired on.
“No” isn’t the end of the world. Often times, it leads to something better. If a potential employer/partner is not willing to take a “leap of faith” on you, take a leap of faith on life and realize maybe God has other plans for you. Maybe you were meant for something else, something greater. Maybe this “no” is diverting your path to somewhere else– somewhere you were destined to go, with more happiness and self-fulfillment than you could ever imagine on the other side. Even though I didn’t get hired at the Fortune 500 company, I feel like I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I ended up enjoying my full-time job as a legal clerk. I would’ve been making more money, but I would’ve been essentially a salesperson rather than doing what I really love to do (which is helping people; hence, studying nonprofit.) Though being a legal clerk still had nothing to do with the many years I devoted to studying theatre for my higher education, it still managed to lead me back to my true passion in the form of a job opportunity– becoming an English/Theatre professor at a university in Taiwan. I definitely would have never received such an offer had I not sacrificed a couple of years getting some “real-world experience.”
Combat every “no” you get in life with a “yes” of your own because YES, you can make the best out of every single situation. Every “no” brings in an opportunity to show the declining party that they were wrong about you, that it was a mistake to pass you up, that you are more brilliant than anyone could ever anticipate. Remember that it is easier to change a “no” to a “yes” than it is to change a “yes” to a “no.” “No” is NOT and will NEVER be a definitive answer. Never get discouraged by a “no”. Always become motivated, stay focused, and show the world your worth.
Go out knowing better, doing better, being better.