graduate school rejection

What Success Really Looks Like

Get Clear. Get Into Grad School. Get On With Your Life.

by Dr. Khia on October 3, 2011

what success looks like

This illustration has been making the rounds around Facebook for a couple of days and I liked it so much I wanted to share it here. I have no idea where this drawing originated from but I do know that I LOVE it for telling the simple and honest truth about the path to success. [click to continue…]

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Bouncing Back From Grad School Rejection – Part II

Get Clear. Get Into Grad School. Get On With Your Life.

by Dr. Khia on September 12, 2011

grad school rejection

Just recently, I blogged a little bit about “being wrong,” or specifically what I learned through being rejected from grad school. Twice. The first time I applied to Ph.D. programs in psychology was in 2000. Then again in 2002. It wasn’t until my third try in 2003 that I finally got an acceptance letter. Multiple acceptance letters, actually.

To be real, it’s very easy for me to sit where I’m sitting now and proclaim that I learned something beneficial each time I applied, that it made me more knowledge about the graduate admissions process. While all of that is definitely true, my experience in the “meantime” of not knowing whether I would get in if I tried again is a completely different story.

A reader asked me the following question in response to my piece on grad school rejection:

How did you overcome the ego blow of not getting in on the first try? How did you overcome of the fear of failure of trying it again?

And the answer is simple as this question… Is this what you are MEANT to be doing or not? [click to continue…]

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Your Fear of “It’s Not Good Enough?” It Doesn’t Go Away

Get Clear. Get Into Grad School. Get On With Your Life.

by Dr. Khia on August 18, 2011

A former classmate of mine shared an article that I think the ENTIRE WORLD should know about. The oh-so-important topic? Shame in academic writing.

You know the feeling. You’ve lost sleep, worked super duper hard on an important paper, spent hours of your life that you will never get back trying to capture your eloquent thoughts in standard 12-point Times New Roman font. You turn it in, hoping to get an A, but halfway fearing that it might not measure up. Or at worse, your professor will laugh uproariously at your best effort.

I remember once working through the night on a draft of my master’s thesis. The feedback on my great piece of theoretical work was less than stellar. MUCH less than stellar. So un-stellar it was that I immediately burst into tears after reading the professor’s comments. It is still a blur to this day, but I remember something about “disjointed and disorganized.”

You may have figured that the fear of incompetence, incoherency, and lack of brilliancy eventually goes away. Sorry to burst more bubbles… but nope it doesn’t. Don’t believe me? Read on for the anecdote of a tenured professor who felt the same exact way! [click to continue…]

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On Being Wrong – Bouncing Back From Grad School Rejection

Get Clear. Get Into Grad School. Get On With Your Life.

by Dr. Khia on July 23, 2011

I have developed a very recent semi-obsession with TED talks. TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” There are tons of speakers – industry leaders, innovators, artists, educators, and investors – who are sharing their thoughts on everything from leadership to artistry to innovation. Some of these talks are downright cool – so says the geek living inside of me.

I watched this TED talk “On Being Wrong” just a few moments ago. Kathryn Schulz, the speaker, apparently wrote a cool book that I need to advance to my ever-expanding “To Read List” called Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. She challenges the idea that to succeed in life, we must never make mistakes.

These thoughts are a little off-center from the TED talk I posted above, but looking back at my life, I can definitely say for sure is that this common belief is super duper amazingly false. Yet it’s a belief that I’m sure we can all relate to. If I had never tried and made mistakes, I would absolutely not be where I am today. I was WRONG – not once, but twice – in applying to graduate school. [click to continue…]

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