Monday, September 16, 2013

Rejection

Do you know that general feeling of tension and malaise you get when you are in the middle of a job hunt? The reluctance to check your e-mail because there may not be any news of the job hunt, or worse, that there is a letter. The pit in the bottom of your stomach when an e-mails pops into your mailbox with a job title in the subject line. The unease with which you open it, bracing yourself for rejection. After all, you applied to dozens of positions, and realistically only expect to get a few offers. The inevitable feeling of worthlessness that washes over you, however briefly, when you see yet another rejection. The process of trying to talk yourself out of the conviction that the rejection is a judgement of you as a person, even though rationally you know it is nothing of the sort.

Yeah, that feeling. The one that comes from repeated rejection.

I've been looking for housing in Small City. I have been sending out dozens of e-mails to ads for rooms. Since I am still spending most of my time in His Town, I do not contact at housing agent in Small City. I am mostly working off with people who have listed places independently. And I get .... nothing. Or at least very little.

Most people do not respond to my e-mails at all. Those that do, respond with a polite but curt statement of non-interest. I have almost always gotten housing from newspaper ads (before Craig's List), word or mouth or Craig's List in my many houses in my undergrad, grad and post doc years. I have never been in a situation where my e-mails have gone almost completely unanswered. I have always managed to find several people interested in showing me their properties.

Perhaps I am transplanting my American reliance on Craig's List for all my housing and second hand needs into a culture that is not used to working outside housing agents. Perhaps I am giving off some sort of odd but subtle negative signal in the way I am approaching prospective landlords. Perhaps my situation is a bit out of the ordinary, and that makes people hesitant to answer. Whatever the reason, I start feeling the way about housing that I feel about rejection letters for jobs. I start wondering if there is something wrong with my mail server.

Then my partner points out my name. I have visions of potential housemates not wishing to live with a fresh off the boat academic from a third world country who speaks English with a heavy accent and has who knows what strange habits. They are not very nice visions. They focus an ugly side of my countrymen that a part of me likes to believe does not exist. They remind me of how poorly some of my fellow fresh off the boat graduate students were treated in my country. They remind me of how rudely a black friend of mine was treated at a diner I normally loved, the time I sent her in to pick up the order while I sat in the car.

We dipped into the bags for hot salty fries on the drive home, talking about how the worst part about experiences like these are the seeds of doubt they plant in one's head. Was the waitress just having a bad day? And the cook? On the same day? It could happen. It is not impossible.

Am I just doing something subtly culturally wrong? I am a gregarious American living in a staid European society. It is not impossible to believe.

The problem with cases of discrimination like this is that it is impossible to tell. But the seeds have been planted. The damage has been done.


1 comment:

  1. Im fully aware of rejection of the world... yet, why does thar gotta be, my just and lovely liege? Why should that bother you so?? Thar aint no rejection with Jesus. Lemme fill-you-up withe avant-gardeness necessary to achieve Seventh-Heaven, my dear...

    Q: Can anyone tell me the difference between K2 and IQ? A: Nthn. In Seventh-Heaven, we gitt'm both for eternity HawrHawr Need a few more thots, ideers, raw wurdz or ironclad iconoclasms? Ta-da! Voila!!

    VERBUM SAT SAPIENTI: As an ex-writer of the sassy, savvy, schizophenia we all go through in this lifelong demise, I just wanna help U.S. git past the whorizontal more!ass! we're in (Latin: words to [the] wise)...

    "This finite existence is only a test, son," God Almighty told me in my coma. "Far beyond thy earthly tempest is where you'll find tangible, corpulent eloquence". Lemme wanna tella youse without d'New Joisey accent...

    I actually saw Seventh-Heaven when we died: you couldn't GET any moe curly, party-hardy-endorphins, extravagantly-surplus-lush Upstairs (in the end without end -Saint Augustine) when my beautifull, brilliant, bombastic girly-girl passed-away due to those wry, sardonic satires.

    "Those who are wise will shine as brightly as the expanse of the Heavens, and those who have instructed many in uprightousness as bright as stars for all eternity" -Daniel 12:3

    Here's also what the prolific, exquisite GODy sed: 'the more you shall honor Me, the more I shall bless you' -the Infant Jesus of Prague.

    Go git'm, girl. You're incredible. See you Upstairs. I won't be joining'm in the nasty Abyss where Isis prowls
    thesuperseedoftime.blogspot.com
    infowars.com
    -YOUTHwitheTRUTH
    -------------------------------
    PS Need summore unique, uncivilized, useless names? Lemme gonna gitcha started, brudda:

    Oak Woods, Franky Sparks, Athena Noble, Autumn Rose, Faith Bishop, Dolly Martin, Willow Rhodes, Cocoa Major, Roman Stone, Bullwark Burnhart, Magnus Wilde, Kardiak Arrest, Will Wright, Goldy Silvers, Penelope Summers, Sophie Sharp, Violet Snow, Lizzy Roach, BoxxaRoxx, Aunty Dotey, Romero Stark, Zacharia Neptoon, Mercurio Morrissey, Fritz & Felix Franz, Victor Payne, Isabella Silverstein, Mercedes Kennedy, Redding Rust, Phoenix Martini, Ivy Squire, Sauer Wolfe, Yankee Cooky, -blessed b9...

    God blessa youse
    (trust-in-Jesus)
    -Fr. Sarducci, ol SNL

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