I got rejected to everything i applied for

Here’s the list of things I applied to, and got rejected from.

Between January 2025 and August 2025:

• Residential Assistant at NYU
• Silicon Valley Fellowship
• 1517 Fund
• TikTok SDE Internship (I made it to the interview stage)

Now that I write it down, the list doesn’t seem that long; I’m not sure why I was making such a fuss about it.

I also remember that, for every one of these applications, I deliberately avoided using AI to draft my materials. So I can’t even blame the tools for my failure; it was simply a lack of skill and an unremarkable attempt at “authenticity,” which was really just me pretending I could work without help.

Even though writing everything myself gave me time to reflect on what I wanted to convey, English still isn’t my first language(another excuse, really).

Part of me thought the reader would assume everyone uses AI anyway and would grade accordingly. But that logic concedes that AI already writes better than I do, and at the pace things are moving, I’ll probably never catch up.

There are two reasons: first, I’m not a writer by trade, so I’m not going to devote endless hours to mastering the craft. Second, AI will only improve; the worst AI we’ll ever see is the one we have today, tomorrow it will be better.

This circles back to an essay I wrote on this platform: Will we stop writing? If writing in my own voice actually puts me at a disadvantage, why should I invest the extra time and energy to produce something others will deem mediocre?

It’s like the thought experiment: if you could implant a chip in everyone’s brain to make them more competitive and open up bigger opportunities, would you do it? AI feels like the closest real-world version of that scenario.

For artists, the value of their work comes from the joy of creating, not from churning out hundreds of pieces for money. Likewise, I suspect people will eventually tire of AI-generated everything. We’ll split into two camps: those who let AI do everything for them and those who want nothing to do with “the evil entity.”

I’m still deciding which side I’m on.