SUBTITLE: “OH GOD! WHAT IF I DON’T GET INTO WIEDEN OR GOODBY??”

(Reposting for our 2016 graduates.) Having been around the ad schools over the years, I overhear conversations in the hallways and the computer labs.

“Dude! You know Ashley? Yeah, she got into Goodby and I didn’t even get an email back from them. God, I suck.”

People, here’s the thing.

You probably don’t suck. It’s just that you’ve been raised in a culture that places a lot of emphasis on winning. “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” “Winners never quit…” and all the others.

Fact is, America has been obsessed with winning ever since we won first place in WW II. We copped a silver in the ’50s space race (damn Sputnik), but we came back and nailed the gold with Apollo 11. Ever since then, we’ve been all, “Who even remembers the second man on the moon?”

It seems we’ve left the grading system and become a pass-fail society; in fact, more like Winners/Failures.

“What? You didn’t get into Harvard? You only got into Notre Dame? Duuuude.”

“What?? You didn’t win the Super Bowl, just the AFL title? Lose, much?”

So, students. Repeat after me:

“I did not get a job offer at Goodby.

But I did get a job offer from (say) Shelby & Hammerstein in Chicago.

And they want to pay me for my ideas.

I am not stocking Bic pens on the shelves of Wal-Mart.

I have landed my first job in a creative industry.

From here, I can probably go anywhere.

Because I have a career now.

It has begun.”

So let us bless our friends who’ve landed jobs at the high-profile agencies. (The jobs come with some extra stress. Sure you want that?)

Let us be kind to ourselves and become “recovering perfectionists.”