Rejection Therapy: Auditioning For All Six of Amherst’s A Cappella Groups

Until I was 13 or 14, every time I performed in a violin recital my knees would wobble. Sometimes mildly, but sometimes so violently that the motion would travel up my body and shake my bow on the strings. I vividly remember once standing on the stage and seeing a mom point at me and whisper to her daughter, “It’s okay, honey. Look, she’s nervous too.” To this day, the mere idea of performing solo in front of other people is enough to make me nauseous.  

Recently, I listened to an episode of the NPR podcast “Invisibilia” called “Fearless.” In it, hosts Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel interview “freelance IT guy” Jason Comely, who — in a depressive episode after his wife left him — created a game to overcome his fear of rejection. Comely set out to get rejected by at least one person every day. He would ask a stranger to drive him in the opposite direction they were headed, or if he could have their croissant. I thought it was just so clever.

Comely’s game made me want to try something similar in my own life, but I needed a twist. I have friends on campus who participate in the college’s six a cappella groups — Route 9, the Zumbyes, the Bluestockings, Terras Irradient, the Sabrinas, and DQ — but I am not a singer, and have never considered joining myself. As tryout sheets started popping up on campus this fall, I imagined myself standing in front of groups of my peers, knees wobbling, opening my mouth to sing. Knowing I had found my twist, I quickly signed up for all six groups, scheduling all of my auditions for the next night. As soon as I had finished, the dread started to creep in. Just as planned.

To rip off the Band-Aid, Route 9 was my first audition. Since Route 9 is an all-male-identifying group, I took a friend’s suggestion and used a fake name to sign myself up for the audition. Thankfully, when I walked in the door of Porter Lounge at 5:45 p.m., the group still let me try out. They asked me to sing scales and match notes, and at one point I just had to say, “I literally don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Once they had tested my range and tonal recall (or something), Route 9 asked me to sing the song I had prepared. It wasn’t easy to sing in front of them, but it wasn’t as difficult as I expected. I didn’t sound good, but I didn’t cry either. There was a whole lot of buildup to a semi-disappointing peak. They said, “That was nice! You have a nice voice!” and then I walked away anticlimactically.

Nevertheless my body was full of adrenaline, I still had five auditions left, and some time to kill before my next one, so I biked home. I was feeling ravenous and didn’t think I could wait for dinner, so I grabbed a bagel and a bread knife. I was so distracted and amped and was blabbering about my audition to my housemates that I wasn’t paying attention and suddenly my hand was covered in blood. The real danger of cutting with a serrated knife is that you’re using a sawing motion. I almost passed out.

But after a few minutes of applied pressure I washed the everything bagel crumbs off my bloody hand and a housemate helped me bandage it up.

Thumb throbbing but treated, I biked back to campus for a Zumbyes audition in Johnson Chapel.

I had learned the basics of the a cappella audition process from Route 9, so I was notably less confused when I faced the others. Most groups asked me to fill out a short form before I auditioned asking for basic information; some included inside joke questions with meanings I didn’t quite understand, inquired about my preference for one group member over another, or, most disturbingly, for my dorm room number.

The rest of my auditions passed in a decreasingly novel blur. The Bluestockings in Chapin Hall were casual and sweet; Terras Irradient in Arms Music Center were full of smiles and gave me a cupful of candy. Sabrinas auditions were held in the Red Room, which seemed fitting given their red and black color scheme. My audition there took the longest of all the groups, but primarily because they were having such a good time that it was hard to get a word in edgewise. At 9:30 p.m. I had my final audition: DQ. By then my song was old hat, and I was tired and wanted to go home. The feeling of disappointment returned.

I sort of shoved the whole experience under the metaphorical rug for the next two weeks, knowing that I planned to write about my experiment but dreading the task. In another subversion of my expectations, the prospect of writing my reflection turned out to be more horrific and panic-inducing than the auditions themselves.

But, after much self-tooth-pulling, I forced myself to reflect. I think the idea of auditioning for all of the a cappella groups on campus was so daunting to me because it felt embarrassing to propose that I could have something I obviously don’t: a good singing voice. By auditioning, I supposed I was expressing a perception of myself as a good singer, a perception that would most likely misalign with those of the group members. I had to contend with knowing they would talk amongst themselves and decide, “She’s wrong about her perception of herself because no, she’s not good enough.”

So maybe I felt numb because I already knew that I wasn’t good enough to be a part of these groups. The adrenaline faded, and the rejection emails came. One group invited me for a callback, but I was out of town and couldn’t attend. Route 9 never actually emailed me after my audition, which I can of course take as a rejection but without some of the formality. It’s possible that my auditioning as a woman for a men’s group spurred this (perhaps unintended) snub. In a sort of perverted twist, getting rejected felt more like a reward than a stab in the gut. When I opened the first email and read the classic “We loved hearing you audition, but unfortunately…” my first thought was, “Oh thank god, well at least I got one.”

And that, after all, is what happened to Comely. Since he was seeking rejection, he started to feel good when he got it. He was accidentally practicing exposure therapy; hacking his brain’s kind of instinctual default settings that crave acceptance.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of the groups I auditioned for eventually found out via word-of-mouth what I was doing, which probably compromised the integrity of my experiment.

I am unsure whether I hacked my brain like Comely or simply have a higher tolerance to rejection than I thought. Although I felt disappointed and confused by my reaction to the rejection, maybe it was the practice in mediocre solo performance that will serve me most. There will certainly be more public speaking on my horizon, as well as more painful and consequential rejections, and maybe I will be more prepared to meet them for having braved Amherst’s a cappella scene.