If you are going to reject me... please do!

"trigger warning" - this post will be far less sophisticated than what I usually aim for on this platform, yet I hope that some of you will be able to relate to my frustration. This is probably more suited to the format of an angry Tweet. Alas, ever since Larry the Bird tweaked its last, I refuse to approach its unsuccessful taxidermy. So Vocal will have to be my punching bag instead.

Before my rant, I'd like to give you some context to try to gain your sympathy first...I am a teenager that had been navigating the job market for a few months, so my idea of feedback comes from school tests graded within a week of their submission and the tempting smell of a chocolate bar on my roommate's table that I can unwrap as soon as I click "Submit" on her English homework.

So yeah, judge me all you want, but I still act like a child used to instant feedback, whether pleasant or not.

As you can guess, navigating the online job market hasn't been an easy transition. Medium (a platform similar to Vocal where I started my writing journey) is a very convenient platform and I am grateful for all the feedback and support I get there, as well as the wonderful community of writers it contains. But as of right now, my articles don't pay me the coffee it takes to write them.

looking for a writing gig doesn't mean knocking on the rusty door of a bankrupt publishing house with a revolutionary novel that can, at last, pull them away from the brink of destruction (not sure if it ever did, but it sure is nice to daydream about it). In this day and age, it means emails... loads and loads of emails, behind each of them; research on the company, a back and forth with their social media manager to find out which of the listed email adresses is actually relevant to me and a helpful friend that runs a second spell-check after Grammarly has done its job.

Once all that is done, and hope of an interesting gig that can pay for my next night out shimmers on the horizon... nothing. Not even the disappointment of rejection. No closure, no feedback, no "try harder" that I grew accustomed to at school. I perfectly understand that a teenager with irregular hours and practically no work experience is not everyone's ideal candidate. I know that a prize I won at 16 but keep putting on every resume won't impress any professional agency. But do I not deserve as much as a simple "no"? An acknowledgment that I gave it the good old college try and wasn't wanted would mean that I could move on and take my Canva-drawn print somewhere else. Instead, I get Tinder-style ghosting. Rejection (at least on interviews..) won't hurt my self-esteem, there are many reasons a company might prefer a candidate over another and I am not asking for a performance review and it is a bad use of my time to wonder about the company politics of a place I was never going to end up. But have the dignity to acknowledge my existence, and at the end of our bad date, if you are going to reject me... please do!