The Rejection by Teachers

My school has a rule that every student must have a Co-Curricular Activity, or CCA for short. It's basically just staying back in school on a few days of the week to participate in whatever activity you are involved in, be it band, choir or sports. When you have joined a CCA, you will have to stick in it for four years.

For me, I joined a CCA which was similar to Girl Scouts (but not very similar). We were given badges for every course completed. In my four years, I had been very devoted, not missing a training without valid reasons. I was selected for all the competitions that was offered to my batch and participated in a national event as well. You could say that my achievements were very nice and highly sought after. I contributed a lot to my unit in terms of participation in events and teaching the juniors. I would say myself as one of the best in my batch.

But everything happened at the start of my fourth year. My batch was told that we had a chance to be nominated for three different badges, three VERY PRESTIGIOUS badges. Only one guy one girl would be selected for each badge. One of them consisted of a Best Unit Cadet, which was given to the person who contributed significantly to the unit. I filled out the nomination forms for every one of them. I was confident I could at least get the Best Unit Cadet badge, as I had excellent performance in terms of contribution.

But reality is always harsh, the more you hope to get something, the more life wont give that to you. One day after my birthday, I was notified by my teachers that I was not selected for any of the three. I was devastated and cried for a few days. I had been so confident before. The people who were awarded the badge, did not even contributed half as much as I did. What was worse was that after they were awarded, they started acting more involved (although all they did was on-stage work, they hardly did any backstage work). I was still standing with the belief that I was a much better candidate then them. But there was nothing I could do. The decisions were final.

It was the darkest few months of my school life. I had no motivation to do anything. I would make up excuses to skip gym class. On many occasions, I was filled with suicidal thoughts. Once, I even held a pen knife up close to my wrist (I didn't do it). But that really affected me a lot.

Half a year has passed. My condition has improved, I wasn't as unstable as before. But thinking back to the rejection would still cause me to want to cry.

While revision for a mathematics test, I was struggling very hard. I could not do a single question. I was suddenly reminded of the rejection. There was this voice in my head that went "Why are you even trying so hard? You know that no matter how hard you try, you will still fail." I was fighting back the negative thoughts. But it was true. I had failed all my mathematics test every since I got to year three. And being reminded of the rejection didn't make my revision any easier. I was fighting against the tears that were going to fall, but to no avail. I decided to stop revising. I was eventually defeated by my thoughts yet again.

After experiencing the rejection, I seemed to become more timid, more afraid. I was afraid that I put in a lot of effort, just to watch it go down the drain. I was afraid to put in effort. I was afraid that history would repeat itself. I used to be very positive, now I've become like this. Perhaps this has become a way to protect myself from even more harm.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Welcome to psychcentral. As my friend Skeezyks would say, welcome and I hope you find the support you are looking for here.

I would like to ask a few questions:

To what extent would you sacrifice to make your unit better?
Before being passed over for a nomination, would you say that your teachers knew of your commitment to your unit?

If I had to guess, I would say that you were very committed to your unit and your teachers knew this about you. You sound like you gave this unit 100% and although achieving this honor would have felt good, it would not have affected your performance very much because you were already giving 100% - you cannot give more than 100%.

You have seen first hand how powerful being rejected has affected you. How powerful would being accepted for this honor been for you? How powerfully would it have affected your future performances? How powerfully did receiving this honor affect the people who ultimately won this award? If losing out on this honor affected you, then winning this honor undoubtedly affected those who won. Perhaps they were only giving 90% before but now they are giving 100%. Giving the award to them then, may have strengthened the entire unit.

I have done this before in my own life - I have seen people who because of low self-esteem (for instance) were not living up to their potential. By promoting or honoring them, their confidence rose and they became a much better member of my unit. They might not have been the most deserving, but the unit deserved the boost in performance it realized when this person began to feel better about themselves.

In my case, I often took the person who was passed over aside and explained my reasons to them, but this is not always possible or a good idea. If you know that you were doing a good job, please consider that your teachers knew this too and passing you over was part of a greater plan.

Hi, Teffytjs, and welcome to Psych Central! I am so sorry you didn't get any of those rewards, considering you wanted them so badly. Maybe the teachers didn't "reject" you as a person but had their reasons for picking other people. Who knows? Politics? Favoritism? Looking for other accomplishments than what you thought?

I also have trouble with rejection but am trying to learn to move on, although it's not easy. Maybe you can look for success in other places. Personal, private successes than mean a lot to you. A thought, anyway.

We care here. Many of us here have felt rejected for all sorts of reasons. You can be okay.

we have a similar outcome here in the USA where some teens are feeling rejected when they dont get awards with their schools...

here we have all kinds of sports that children can take part in. in the younger and elementary years the way its done is every child regardless of their participation, input and scoring gets an award or trophy. the idea was to foster an attitude of everyone is equal and everyone is important to the team and no one is better than another, compete and play but hey doesnt matter how well you do you will get an award/ certificate or trophy just like your other team mates will...

unfortunately this tends to backfire when the children reach Jr high and high school where there is limited number of trophies/ awards/ certificates and there are rules and guidelines that govern who in the grade or on the team gets what or none at all. suddenly young teens are faced with the reality to get those awards/ certificates and trophies it has to be earned according to the rules set down, .... what a way to plummet someones self esteem and feelings of self worth and fostering feelings of rejection, not good enough and such. not fun.

heres what I tell my nieces and nephews.... if you feel you should have won that award/ trophy, certificate then be proactive.. put in writing why you felt you should have gotten the award, certificate, trophy. then ask the teachers or board that gave out those awards/ certificates, trophies for some of their time, schedule an appointment and give them the letter and ask them to explain their side of it and if there is anything that can be done for next time. Dont attack them or make it a personal you are out to get me, you just dont like me kind of thing. look towards the future... I have seen some situations where the teachers have done this with my nieces and nephews and realized it was a teachers mistake. other times it turned out there were reasons why they did not meet the criteria for receiving that award, certificate or trophy. Sometimes it was just a matter of hard decisions of all participants great but limited number of awards, certificates and trophies. either way they know what they had to do for next year.

my point maybe you can talk with the teachers or board that over saw the awards you missed out on. maybe if you can schedule some time with them they will be able to help you find out why you didnt get the awards and if theres something you can do, that will help you get it next time.

Teffytjs, I would only tell you one thing that “hope sustains life”. You can enroll yourself in after school activities to divert your mind from what happened at school.

Welcome to PC

hmmmm, I put in effort not to be recognized but it's because I want to, because it comes from within me, not because of some external recognition from someone else. Recognition is nice but sometimes it just comes in a comment "thanks for a job well done".

Do we really need external award recognition to motivate our excelling in what we do or do we do it because it's what we just naturally do?

Had this conversation with my ex-H in the past about the amount of work I put into an easy class in college. I put in extra work to learn as much as I possibly can. A good grade is usually a byproduct of that & there aren't a limited number of good grades like there are awards but his philosophy was to always just get by with the least amount of work he had to do in order to just get by. That philosophy showed up not only in school but in his whole life & it wasn't a very endearing quality in his life. It looked in reality that he just didn't care & was lazy. While excelling & putting 100% never got me any awards, it got me internal satisfaction of knowing I have put my best into the things I do in life.

I may not get awards but people know they can depend on me to get a job done well & can call on me & trust that I will give them 100-200% in anything they ask me to do.

The internal award for me of knowing that I have done the best job I can is the best award we can give ourselves. Any other awards are like "icing on the cake"....nice but not necessary in my feeling of accomplishment.

I also found out early on in my life is that there will ALWAYS be someone else who is better at something than I am & I think that recognizing their higher talent doesn't negate mine but it's nice to give them recognition for what they excell in & not just look at me & want recognition for my level of accomplishment....nothing is ALL ABOUT ME.

In a situation like what you have described, often the person selected is not necessarily the one that has put in the most effort or proven themselves. There are most likely reasons for the choices made that you have no idea of too. Sometimes it's more of a political or social connection thing where the individuals that got selected have a closer relationship with someone who was making the choice too. It could have even been a choice based on how the individuals needed to be handed something that would boost their self esteem and you were passed over simply because you already had proven yourself to be capable.

That being said, I am going to share a story I had heard, a true story. This man was very good at doing a lot of things, he would get great jobs too, BUT, he could not seem to stay in a job for a long time. He would end up being let go a lot. Then once again he got a really good job and was there for about a year and his boss called him in to tell him that he was being let go. Then his boss said to him, "do you want to know why?".
His boss said, "you are very good at your job, you do your work great too. The problem is that while you do your work great, if others fall behind you end up doing their jobs too. Well, for a while these individuals have been coming to me complaining and they are unhappy about "you" doing their jobs too. So, I am letting you go because I can't have my other employees upset like this."

MAYBE what you did wrong was that you were too proficient. Sometimes that's the problem and not that a person isn't good at doing their job or activity.

When I used the example of the true story about a man's experience with jobs, I am not saying his problem is your problem, what I am saying however is that this man genuinely did not KNOW his problem until that one boss decided to tell him the "why".

You have decided that you have been "rejected" but that is you deciding the reason instead of you seeking out these teachers and asking them "why" you were passed over despite all the effort you put in to this activity. Remember that you are still just "learning" and part of that includes asking verses running away with how you feel which as you have shared is "rejected". As you are now noticing it is this emotion that is disrupting your efforts towards embracing learning other subjects.

Also, one of the things I have noticed in my life is how educational ideals are NOT necessarily a true judge of "the best or most worthy". This fact has led to many who develop a take away message of "being rejected". When I think about this, one of the things I think about is how a mere bagger at a grocery store noticed how the way bagging was being done was not proficient and he created something he felt would make this so much easier. Well, as a result this bagger is now a millionaire. This individual was not considered all that intelligent and he did not have that coveted education either.