To my disappointment, I recently found out I was not chosen for the internship I applied for in Copenhagen. I hadn’t received any notice that the positions had been filled, so finding the information out through other people’s Facebook-updates felt both surprising, and pretty crummy. Despite not trying to get my hopes up, I have been imagining my future as an intern in Copenhagen for months, and now (like a bad break up with the image of my “ideal” gap year), I need to move on and find alternative positions.

My initial reaction was shock, and then panic. It is very hard to get a job in Denmark as an English speaker, and doubly as hard to get a work permit without a job offer. I started researching every English-speaking establishment and publication in the city, and sent emails to each of them, inquiring about jobs and volunteer work. However, as I was researching my options in panic-mode, I started to realize that this rejection actually might have been a blessing in disguise. My goal for my gap-year is to explore my options and verify I want to study in grad school. Yes, the internship would have been great, but this way I can do multiple things to help my reach my decision.

As I’ve mentioned in prior posts, psychology has been a strong interest of mine. I shied away from majoring in psychology in college because I didn’t want to “follow in my parents footsteps,” but after taking Positive Psychology, I was fascinated by the new field. My hypothetical plan now is to take a few preliminary courses in Psychology (in Denmark or the US) to make sure it is what I want to pursue, involve myself in research. If all goes well, I would then apply to a Post-Baccalaureate program in Psychology, and then do a two-year program in Positive Psychology (of course, the specifics are not entirely worked out – but it’s a start).

In a roundabout way, my rejection helped me to focus my energy on deciding what it is I want to work towards instead of relying on having the next year “figured out”. From my list of possible career paths, Positive Psychology involves all of the things I’m looking to do with my life – help people, and work in a creative capacity. I think it would be exciting to break ground on a new field of inquiry, and do something to help people flourish in everyday life.