I got really depressing news today. I got a rejection email from the research institute where I basically applied for my dream job.
I am so incredibly sad and disappointed now. I know it's my own fault for getting my hopes up so high. I know I should have known better from the beginning than to expect anything positive, after all I knew there were other applicants even from my own university - one of them probably having better grades than me and a better thesis topic. Still, it hurts me so much to see my dreams for the future crumble to dust.
I was expecting to prove myself to the people there during the internship, to facilitate getting into the PhD program at that place next January. I was hoping it would help me make up for the "lost" time before I started my current study - I studied at the university of Vienna for 2 years before I found the "right" thing for me, and these years are completely wasted and lost, and as it seems now, will forever be.
Now I can't stop wondering what the reason for the rejection was.
Do I come across to unfriendly? Is it the content of my letter of motivation?
Is it my grades? Is 1.4 still not good enough, considering that I have some "bad" grades in some of the main subjects like Chemistry or Clean Room Training?
Is it my thesis topic, which, as I found out too late, even contains a word that is used in the fucking wrong context, because at that time I didn't know any better and nobody bothered to tell me until after it had been approved?
Or is it the fact that I have only worked for every single summer since I was 16, the last years all in scientific companies or institutes, to prove my motivation and polish up my CV?
I am so disappointed right now.
I got my former internships always because I knew somebody, somewhere, who was able to help me one or the other way to get into some interesting position and work there for a few weeks. I thought that by now, I'd have proven myself enough to get a position only with my own skills and experience. I was so wrong.
I wonder if I will ever find a job that way.
I'm the first in my family to go into scientific research, so I don't have any "connections". I have no doctors or scientists in my family and got my previous two jobs thanks to chance encounters and was incredibly lucky that I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone... etc.
Now my "connections" are depleted. I can go back to a place I have previously been, but what for? I really wish to get into a specific direction, and working in a completely sifferent area of research won't help me to get accepted there any more than it already does.
I really don't know what to think anymore.
I regret so many life choices I made, that I sometimes think it would have been better if I had never started to go to university at all. Maybe I would be so much better off as an office worker or if I had done an apprenticeship. I wanted to become a confectioner once. For real. People have told me it would have been a waste, but honestly - what have I proven so far other than that I know how to make use of connections? Nobody wants me solely because of my skills or wits or because I achieved this or that. People don't want me. How much will this change if I just do more and more, when at the same time I get older and older and the same grave mistakes remain like fat and ugly stains in my CV?
I feel depleted of all energy now. I am drained, I don't know how I'll manage to study for the exam in June.
Of course I'll try to find something else. It was my mistake from the beginning to apply for one job only. I told myself I wouldn't mind if I don't get it and that I could work on the flat renovation instead. But I don't feel comfortable with that actually. I wanna do something, I wanna learn and prove myself, I want to get a chance to do that. I will try to find another job, even if it's probably already far too late by now.
I just realized that I'm not afraid anymore that nobody might wanna talk to me at the class reunion next week. I don't wanna talk anyway.