Rejection hurts, and it's easy to feel defeated and give up.
Not Qingyue(Annie) Wang, though. She was rejected from Google not once, not twice, but seven times. Each rejection hurt, but she came back time after time, determined to try again. She spent hours and hours studying C++ and preparing for interviews, but seemed to keep coming up short.
Still, she reminded herself that her rejections weren't a reflection of her abilities, bravery, hard work, or willingness to learn. In 2022, after a recruiter reached out to her about applying again, she finally landed her dream job as a software engineer at Google. When she got the phone call, she couldn't believe it.
Two years and three apartments later, she still keeps her Google welcome letter on her shelf and looks at it every day. "It reminds me of my tenacity and inspires me to keep pursuing my goals," she writes.
Read more of Qingyue(Annie)'s words, edited by me, at Business Insider: