Delaying the inevitable?

I was sitting at the student lounge in the Journalism School talking to Holly at about three this afternoon when Laura whispered into my right ear while standing behind me. "I didn't get in. The MA," she said. "They rejected me."

I looked at her, then jumped to my feet and rushed to the nearest computer terminal, leaving Holly to continue her conversation with Laurie without me. Laura and I had applied to continue with a second one-year degree in specialized journalism. I had been waiting for their admission decision for weeks.

But it was not to be. The announcement was stark. I had gotten the same bland, automated rejection letter. I felt my world literally turn dark at that moment. All my plans were going to shreds, I felt my head spinning big time. Why? After the ton of rejections from everywhere else, this rejection was especially hard to take - even my own school was rejecting my application to specialize in business and economic reporting.

It's easy to just blame the economy or descend into a self pity fest, but my mind was a blank. I was just too shocked to know how to react or what to think. I walked home after that because I just didn't feel well enough to be seen in public at that point. I had only had that sinking feeling twice before - when my best friend Gerald died in 2000 and when somebody stole my $1000 bill from my bag in school the year before.

I went home and typed an email out notifying my primary circle of friends and my teachers who wrote those recommendations for me. As I laid on my bed and stared at the ceiling afterwards, I got reminded of those hunches of the last few days, especially with each successive rejection.

If with every door closed means there would be another one open farther down the road, then could it be that God is hearing what I really wanted to be doing? To just take some time off, travel and rest before starting work - but that would mean wasting the professional amplitude coming to Columbia was meant to do for me, especially if I wanted to work in America.

Doing the MA made so much sense in every single way. Buying me time, and better prepare me to do the job of a business and economic journalist while I sit out the recession and prepare a second assault at the biggies, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters in particular.

I also wanted a second chance at living the New York life. My first year has been so far plagued with so much assimilation and identity related issues I almost feel as if I needed to come here for personal development, for that space away from my mother to grow up, as much as I needed to come here for professional development. I also wanted to travel around the States more.

But who was I kidding. Nic was right: staying for another year is merely delaying the inevitable of going out there in a difficult market and be a real journalist. The MA might make all the human sense in the world, but it's probably not the right thing for me to do right now. Maybe it's also a sign to tell me to stop wasting time, get out there and report...and then go back to school to do the MBA, Law or International Affairs/MPP degree if I so desire. I could see this rejection as quickening that eventuality and pushing me out of the only comfort zone I've come to know, school.

I guess if nothing crops up between now and graduation, I could still do the travelling thing first. I would probably take two months out to travel across the country and do the California summer road trip I have always meant to take, maybe even taking in parts of Canada at that. And then I am going to make a swing through parts of South America.

I still haven't done my graduate trip thing, so maybe this is it. But I don't know anymore. I am still hoping to get a gig somewhere in America for a year at least. But there is also a real chance I would be back in Singapore sooner than I thought I would, defeated in one sense, but triumphant in another.