Lawyers love their trophy walls. But when I was practicing law in Washington at the U.S. Department of Justice, I did something different.
Among my awards and photos, in a place of honor, I framed and hung three letters.
These were the letters I’d received the first couple of times I’d applied for to work at Justice—my dream job back then, when I was just out of law school.
Letter #1 was a rejection letter that arrived after I’d originally applied as a law student to the Attorney General’s Honors Program at Justice.
Letter #2 was another rejection letter, which reached me 14 months later, after I reapplied for the same job. Nope again.
Letter #3 arrived a few months after that. This time, I’d broken the rules, skipped HR, and sent my application to a Justice Department official I’d met in an interview during Round 1.
Fortunately, this third letter contradicted its predecessors, and it contained an offer for a job as an entry level trial attorney.
Some people don’t like to admit that they’ve failed or been rejected in life. But that wasn’t me—and so I framed the letters.
They looked like the framed degrees and honors that other attorneys had on their walls: commendations, thank-you notes, evidence from particularly memorable litigation.
You had to look closely to notice the difference. But I always knew they were there. I wanted to remember always that I’d had to hustle and persist to get the job.
May it please the court...
I don’t practice law anymore. If you look on my LinkedIn profile, the entire time I spent at Justice now gets just a single line. Still, I’m proud.
Barely a month after I landed the job, I was in court, arguing my first case—doing what I’d wanted to do when I went to law school to begin with.
Ultimately, I was the lead attorney on more than 200 cases. I was a pretty good lawyer, but I have to say that I’m an even better ex-lawyer.
So now the rejection letters are in a box somewhere, packed away. I hadn’t thought of them for a long time, but I don’t want to forget.
My goals have changed radically from back then, but the same traits that got me where I wanted to go then, are the ones I need now — especially as literally everything about the business I left law for is changing radically.
Remember how you got here
I will bet you’ve had to overcome challenges to achieve the things you’re most proud of. Maybe, you’ll have to do it again sometime.
Most importantly, you’ve probably failed a few times.
So as we close out 20269(!), let’s not to forget those failures, or paper over them or explain them away. Instead, let’s celebrate them.
Put them in the place of honor on your version of a trophy wall.
It’s never about the failures; it’s about what you learned and how you overcame them.
And you never know when you’ll need that reminder again.
Other things worth knowing …
WSJ: Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said. Musk himself posted on X hours after the slowdown became public, “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” using the acronym for president of the United States. Trump told reporters Monday that he didn’t know who was responsible for the Starlink slowdown, “but I would like to find out.”
AP: Fresh curfews were being imposed across the city centers of Paris and Lyon on Tuesday after the first quiet night since France’s most destructive rioting in years, as Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said a “massive” security operation was planned for new protests Saturday.
The Guardian: Voters in Alberta overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to begin the process of independence, delivering a decisive victory for supporters of Canadian unity and deepening divisions within the separatist movement. With nearly 1.9 million votes counted, roughly 76% people supported remaining in Canada, while 24% backed beginning a process toward separation. The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, who grew up in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital, celebrated the result.
Reuters: Contracts to purchase previously owned US homes plunged to a record low in September as rising mortgage rates depressed demand for housing. The pending home sales index tumbled 7.3% to 66.0 last month, the lowest level since the series started in 2001.
IBTimes UK: Companies are increasingly licensing workplace emails, Slack messages, and internal documents to AI developers, creating a lucrative market that some employees may not know about. As AI firms race to automate office jobs, businesses are receiving six-figure offers for their digital records, sometimes with just 48 hours to decide.
AP: Across 38 seasons of “The Simpsons,” the Halloween-themed “Treehouse of Horror” episodes have always been a treat of spooky stand-alone storylines. On Sunday, the show surprised viewers with a major resurrection: Apu, the beloved Kwik-E-Mart operator who had not been heard for the better part of a decade, spoke once again in Springfield.
NASA: Four crew members in NASA’s simulated Mars mission celebrated their one year anniversary of living and working in isolation in a 1,700 square foot 3D-printed habitat at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Crew members have operated as though they were on the Red Planet, growing crops, managing limited resources, navigating communication delays, and conducting suited extravehicular activities on a simulated Martian surface. The crew will exit their habitat on Saturday, Oct. 31, to conclude their mission.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Sung Jin Cho on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this at Inc.com. See you in the comments!
Thank you for sharing your story; it's been my mantra all along to never give up trying. I too have had some rejections for various things I've gone for, but I don't let it stop me. Took me two years of interviewing and many rejections before I landed the job I was after and now have been here at the same company for 26 years and still loving my work. I have a saying "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger", and I believe that it's the rejections in my lifetime that made me stronger and who I am today.
When is 20269?