I completely recognize the difference between my perception and feelings and reality. right now reality is hiding and my feelings and preceptions have taken over.

Failure is a strong word but that is how I perceive events. Maybe rejection is the right word but in my world rejection is failure.

I had submitted a paper for consideration to be presented at an honors conference. I presented last year and felt that this years submission was far stronger than last years. However, I was rejected. to me this means failure in some way. What should I have done differently? How could I have improved it so that I would have been accepted? Is it because of my current academic position or something else?

Now the reality and logic side of me realizes that it was a HUGE longshot that this paper would ever be accepted. It was a highly controversial and volitile topic. I sort of laughed when I submitted it knowing that someone people would read and immediately want to have me shot let alone allow to present such a topic at an honors conference. There is a good chance that for this reason alone it was rejected. It is also possible that there were just other topics that were presented that were significantly better. I can accept (reluctantly and only on occasion) that I am not perfect and cannot be perfect.

Back to the emotional side with my slightly (maybe more than slightly) skewed perceptions. Being rejected can seriously impact future education and maybe even scholarship opportunities. The conference itself have several scholarship opportunities. In addition, being able to say that I presented more than once at this conference would look awesome on graduate applications as well as scholaship applications. Is this correct? Beats me but it makes sense to me.

Again back to the reality side. I have presented at this conference in the past and that alone looks good on all sort of applications. I can also say that I have been published which coults for something. However, having more of that to stick on a piece of paper to impress someone can't hurt.

Logically I know this isn't the end of the world and I will have any number of opportunities to do this kind of thing. I also know that my value is not placed on this one event. Emotionally, it sucks. It sucks in a huge way that even words cannot quite express.