In the spring of my junior year, I applied for a full-time NASA engineering summer internship in Texas. Satisfied with my application, for the next two months, I daydreamed nonstop about designing satellites and studying ocean topography with the world’s finest space agency.

I remember reading that rejection letter the first time at my desk in the middle of Placement Calculus, and for the following week, I felt devastated and hopeless. If I couldn’t live out my fantasies being a NASA intern, then what really was the point of school, of friends, of anything? In hindsight, this notion makes absolutely no sense, but in the moment, my hopes and dreams had just been mercilessly ground to dust. I spent the next month sulking, cringing whenever my friends mentioned any sort of summer program that they were attending and imagining all sorts of wonderful things that I was missing out on as a reject.

While hammering out my plans for the summer on a calendar, I noticed that the NASA internship would have occurred at the same time as an important diving meet. As an athlete dedicated to my sport, I felt some small relief at not being forced to decide between the two. And even closer to the end of the school year, I was lucky enough to be offered a summer internship at a local robotics company alongside two of my friends, with flexible hours and — even better — free snacks. It wasn’t as shiny as getting to show off a NASA badge on my Linkedin profile page, certainly better than nothing.

By the end of that summer, not only did I have the time of my life at that robotics internship, but I also ended up qualifying for multiple high- level diving competitions. Had I been selected for and gone on that NASA internship, I would undoubtedly never have been able to do either of those things, and likely would have had nowhere near as much fun.

My experience that summer helped me realize that no matter what sort of disappointment or setbacks I experienced, there was always a path forward as long as I kept looking for one. Over the course of my subsequent senior year, as I was rejected by more programs, bombed tests and suffered injuries that temporarily put me out of my athletic training, I kept in mind the valuable lesson I learned and continued moving forward to the best of my ability.

I’m not here to tell you to just “look on the bright side” or “think of the glass as half full” in the face of failure. Instead, I want you to know that you shouldn’t stay down. No matter how hard you get hit, the silver lining is always going to be right around the corner. It might be just out of sight, and you might have to drag yourself across the floor around that corner to reach it, but I can promise you that it’s there.

In society today and perhaps especially at Gunn, it’s too common to focus excessively on success and synonymize failure with defeat. It’s true that failure can lead to defeat, but only when you don’t get back to your feet, readjust your gloves, and put your fists up for another round.