As we go through life, we’re going to have a lot of opportunities to learn how to deal with rejection.
And while there are many ways that we can feel that old familiar sting, the most common forms of rejection we’ll face tend to be either romantic, professional, or scholastic.
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But while some have managed to get their rejections reversed through pure charisma, we generally understand that the people who turned us down have made their final decisions and that we can’t just be accepted everywhere.
At the same time, it’s a lot harder to stomach that rejection if we think it happened for a questionable reason and that’s what led one German artist to put the art school he applied to on blast.
On January 26, Berlin artist Jonas Jödicke uploaded a TikTok about the letter he received after applying to the Berlin University Of Arts.
If that name sounds familiar, it’s likely because he accused Aaron Carter of stealing one of his pieces to promote a clothing line a couple of years ago.
But about five years before he became prominent enough to be embroiled in that saga, Jödicke was seeking to expand the skills he had taught himself and thus applied to the school’s fine art and visual communication programs.
He then the shared the portfolio he had sent over, which contained a majority of digital pieces, but also some watercolors and pencil drawings.
Once you see the full video, you’ll notice that his work is largely inspired by wildlife and often incorporates themes regarding how humanity has impacted the natural world.
Although some of the pieces included are now mysterious even to him, he recalled being satisfied with his portfolio at the time and figured it was his best chance of getting accepted.
But of course, the TikTok video wouldn’t exist if that had happened and Jödicke would end up receiving this rejection letter.
As he put it, “It says I’m not talented enough to study with them and that my art follows clichés that I don’t understand.”
But while he might have normally thought this was genuinely how a reviewer felt and accepted the rejection as is, he realized that this was more of a boilerplate rejection letter than it seemed after his sister received an identical one.
And while Jödicke didn’t let this letter discourage him from pursuing what would turn out to be a successful art career, it now angers him because he had heard from so many others who did give it all up.
And whether their rejection letters came from that particular art school or not, they were reported as similarly generic and discouraging.
In Jödicke’s words, “So dear art schools, I completely get it. You can’t accept everyone and sometimes it’s just not a fit. But you can definitely do better than these half-assed letters that you send to everyone shattering their dreams left and right.”