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Rejection

It was more than 30 years ago that I came home from school to find the stack of skinny envelopes, and the one fat one. We all knew what that meant. A skinny envelope meant a rejection, a "have a good life, we don't want you, no enclosures necessary." A fat envelope was a yes.

I had a pile of skinnies from all the places I'd dreamt about — Harvard, especially, but also Yale and Princeton, then in their first years of accepting women, and Pembroke, which was the girls' college at Brown in those days. I think I got on the waiting list at Jackson, which was the girls' Tufts, but it didn't matter. The fat envelope was from Wellesley, my last choice, the only "women's college" on the list, the school my mother made me apply to. They accepted me and gave me a very generous scholarship, and that, as they say, was that.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that American colleges and universities received a record number of applications this year, meaning the acceptance rates reached record lows. I should've known. The year I had my daughter, I remember reading that more babies were born that year than in any since the baby boom. At the time, I thought of all the advantages, culturally speaking, of being part of a "boom generation," as I was. I didn't think of college acceptance rates 18 years down the road.

I'm not writing about my daughter here, both to protect her privacy and because she will be fine. The thin envelopes have been replaced by e-mail messages and holding your breath while you link to the decision. And while yesterday was not a dream come true, she has good choices. Most kids do, even if they don't realize it right now.

Today's message is for the kids who are heartbroken by having their dreams dashed, and especially for their parents — all the rest of you who had your kids in the wrong year and worry that somehow you did something wrong.

I remember when my kids were younger, believing that if I worked hard enough and made enough money and had enough famous people's cell phones in my rolodex I could somehow protect my children from all the pain I have faced in my life. Of course, that was never true. As I have learned, as every parent has to learn, we cannot protect our children from life. We can only help them to grow the skin that will allow them to absorb the blows, endure the pain and go forward. Rejection is one of them. It requires a thick skin to deal with thin envelopes, or their Internet equivalent, but it is the sort of thick skin that, once grown, stands you in good stead.

I would like to tell you I loved Wellesley, that they were the happiest years of my life, that I ended up happy that Harvard hadn't taken me, but that wouldn't be true. I had many hard days at Wellesley. We used to joke that the only man we saw for months on end was the janitor, and while that wasn't really true, it wasn't as far off as I wished. I formed great work habits, developed confidence in my academic abilities and made lifelong friends — all important things. But I always wished I'd gotten into Harvard.

So it goes. I always wished I was born with a fast metabolism, a gift for tennis and a signing voice that stayed in tune. Not so. Life is less about the hand you're dealt than how you play it. For some kids and, yes, for some of us parents, it starts with those thin envelopes and learning to be grateful for the fat one in the bunch.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.