A wounded rejection can become a lifelong private engine.
Evidence
Nesson had taught at Harvard Law School for nineteen years. He had known from the age of six that he wanted to be a lawyer. As an undergraduate at Harvard College, he had marked time by studying mathematics until he could enter law school. The subject bored him and he got mediocre grades. In his junior year he took the law school boards, got an almost perfect score, and applied for early admission to Harvard Law. He was shocked when he was rejected. He appealed to the dean of the law school. He was even more shocked when the dean told him not to bother applying again. High test scores and low grades indicated laziness, the dean said, and Harvard Law did not want lazy students. Nesson framed the rejection letter in a black border, as if it were a obituary, and hung it above his desk. He began studying mathematics in earnest. His grades improved. He applied again to the law school, and this time he was admitted. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 1374
Categorization
- SHARE: The detail of Nesson framing his Harvard Law rejection letter in a black border like an obituary and hanging it above his desk is a single-person tidbit for a lawyer friend.
- SEED: Angle: ‘The Rejection Letter in the Black Frame’ — how the people we envy most often keep a humiliation mounted where they can see it daily.
- XREF: connects to: Inflicted pain can be embraced and transformed by its recipients into something else. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 416
Broader Connections
- Inflicted pain can be embraced and transformed by its recipients into something else.
#corroborates(0.90) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 416