Avoiding the 'LMO' Pile

How I let one of my biggest failures define me for far too long.

In the state of Indiana, basketball is life. You’ll find a basketball goal in the driveway of nearly every house, and in some rural areas you’ll find one attached to the side of a barn.

Like most kids who grew up in Indiana, I dreamed of playing basketball for the Hoosiers. But height and the ability to jump high are not attributes God blessed me with, so I resigned myself to settling for just being a student at Indiana University and attending basketball games as a fan.

As both of my siblings went through college at IU, I relished every chance I got to visit campus and attend basketball games. I envisioned what my experience there would be like and couldn’t wait to get to my senior year of high school when I could apply for college. It was already decided: I was going to IU.

I applied early during my senior year and anxiously awaited the decision. As the school year rolled into December, I had still not gotten an official decision and started get anxious. Meanwhile, most of my classmates who applied to IU had already heard they were accepted. 

I wanted to be happy for them and celebrate their good news, but I was overcome with jealousy and anxiety about my own pending decision. The status on my application portal finally changed: 

I had been placed on the waitlist. My heart sank.

So many questions began racing through my mind. How? Why? What does this mean? Is this a “no”? 

It just didn’t make sense. I was a good high school student. Not valedictorian, but a good student — mostly A’s and B’s with the occasional C (usually in math and science. I’m a liberal arts and humanities guy to my core). I was involved in a lot of extracurriculars in high school and in my community and was really successful in a few of them, like tennis, choir and the speech team. I even held leadership roles in some of them. My siblings both graduated from IU. All of this together made me assume I was shoo-in to be accepted. 

By this point, all I had talked about with my friends for years was wanting to go to IU. I had visited and applied to other schools, but that was mostly just part of the process because my parents thought it was a good idea to have backup plans “just in case” plans changed. I actually enjoyed a few of the visits and briefly entertained playing tennis at a couple of small schools, but my heart was always at IU. It helped that IU has a strong journalism school, which I had already decided would be my major.

A few weeks went by, and when anyone asked if I’d heard from IU, I lied or made up some story to avoid having to say what had really happened. It was around late January or February by this point, and I couldn’t just wait for the decision to change. I had to pivot.

Somewhat begrudgingly, I took a tour of Western Kentucky University, which also touts a strong journalism school and even stronger student newspaper. All things considered, it was a solid backup plan. My cousin played football for WKU in the early 2000s, so I was already somewhat familiar with the school and the campus. It offered in-state tuition since we were so close to the Kentucky border, and it was far enough away to provide a buffer that allowed me to truly be on my own.

After the visit, I decided to apply, and it wasn’t long before I was admitted. By now, I had accepted the reality that my IU dream was not happening. I never did get an actual decision from IU — only “waitlist.” Even after following up with them numerous times, I was never actually admitted. 

There’s a chance that if I had waited it out long enough, eventually I might have been admitted to IU late in the Spring or Summer. But taking that risk felt irresponsible. I don’t know what my life would’ve been like had I gone to IU, but I do know what I would’ve missed out on by not going to WKU.

I made really great friends, got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ (better known now as just CRU), joined a Bible study and was a member of the club tennis team. As a freshman I landed a job at the student newspaper, and by the start of my sophomore year, I was covering sports and doing exactly what I wanted to do. 

Things were going well and I could tell I was developing into the student, person and journalist I was capable of being. Something just clicked once I got to college and was on my own. I became more responsible and even more passionate about learning, especially in the classes related to my major. I was truly enjoying my time at WKU.

Despite all of this, I was still working through the residual shame and embarrassment that my de facto rejection from IU had left me with. No matter how many times I saw my byline in the student newspaper or how much fun I had on campus, some days I still felt unsatisfied and unfulfilled. I believed the lie that what I was doing was somehow “less than” because I was doing it at WKU — a smaller school and my second choice — than at IU. It was as if I was playing in the minor leagues instead of the big leagues.

Some time during my sophomore year, I began filling out a transfer application to IU. That was partially influenced by the fact that I was dating a girl who was a student at IU, but even after the success I was experiencing at WKU, I was still seeking the validation that I thought an acceptance letter from IU would bring. I ultimately decided not to apply because I was fearful that I would just get the same response and it would just double down on my belief that I “wasn’t good enough.”

Instead, I continued to blossom at WKU. I eventually became the sports editor and then the editor-in-chief and was fortunate to win numerous individual and team awards as part of the student newspaper. Some of the best memories of my life happened in our newspaper office and with friends I made from those experiences. I got to cover the NCAA basketball tournament, countless football games and tell some incredible stories of athletes, students and faculty members. 

I made lifelong friends during those four years, and to this day I’m still close with several professors and my newspaper adviser. I don’t know if I would’ve had some of these same experiences at a bigger school like IU.

But I was blinded from the full beauty of that season of life for many years. I let the rejection from IU define me as a failure and fill me with bitterness. That girl and I eventually broke up, which only made me even more bitter toward IU — so much so that, for a couple of years, I retaliated by becoming a vocal superfan of IU’s biggest rival Purdue and an even louder critic of IU. 

I was projecting, clearly, and holding a massive grudge. It’s not a whole lot different from letting unforgiveness take root in our heart. God tells us in Ephesians to “let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”

Bitterness hardens our hearts. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way: “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no 'root of bitterness' springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”

Holding onto bitterness puts you into sort of a mental and emotional jail. The only way out is to let it go and forgive. It’s not always that simple, but it’s what God calls us to do. Conversely, forgiveness and contentment soften our hearts and allow them to be molded into what God wants them to be.

The fact that I was waitlisted by IU has been a source of insecurity for me for years and not one I’ve shared with many people. I’ve tried to dress it up as much as possible by telling people WKU was just the better fit for me, that I saved money, that it provided better opportunities. All of that is true, but they aren’t the primary reason I didn’t attend IU. WKU wasn’t my first choice, and for years it was hard to reconcile with that. Writing it all out here, though, is cathartic.

Now in my mid-30s, I can look back and recognize that my adult life has largely been defined by my time at WKU. Most of my internships and jobs happened because of professors or advisors at WKU and connections I made with alumni.

While Emily and I weren’t in school at the same time, it’s a special thing to share an alma mater with your spouse and much of your extended family. We now live in Bowling Green, where WKU is located. I truly don’t know what my life would look like had I not gone to WKU.

While I can look back with hindsight and see that God was indeed working things out for His good, that WKU was where I was supposed to be, I’ll admit that there’s still a part of me that feels like I’m on the outside looking in when I talk to people who graduated from IU. There’s a part of me that still seeks the validation that I thought an acceptance letter and degree from IU would bring.

It took years for me to work through the bitterness to allow myself to be an IU basketball fan again. In a weird way, I think living in Kentucky has helped, because cheering for the Hoosiers has provided a channel to keep my connection to my home state while living in Kentucky. But even when I attended a game recently, I could tell some of those insecure and envious feelings haven’t totally dissipated.

About a year and a half ago, I finally got some clarity on what may have happened with my application. One of my first stories for U.S. News & World Report was about how colleges choose which students to admit. With my own experience in mind, I was intrigued to get a peek behind the curtain.

One of the sources I spoke with was an independent college counselor who had previously worked in a college admissions office. She spoke about what admissions officers have to consider when sifting through thousands of applications each year. A lot of factors go into admissions decisions and it’s not always a meritocracy, I’ve since since learned. With a rejection or waitlist decisions, it’s not always as simple as, “this student just wasn’t good enough to get in here.” There are a myriad of other factors at play.

But something she said stood out to me.

The goal for applicants, she said, is to avoid being put in the “LMO” pile. “LMO is shorthand that some admissions officers use when a kid looks great, there’s nothing wrong with this application, but LMO: Like Many Others,” she said. “There’s nothing really that stands out. That’s really the challenge, is how do you stand out and not be an LMO?”

Maybe that was me. Maybe my application just didn’t stand out enough. Even though there was a lot of good stuff on it, maybe it was just too much like others to where I didn’t leave much of an impression. As an Enneagram 4, this is a particularly hard reality to accept.

While I don’t remember the specifics of my application or what I wrote about in personal essays, I do remember how I let that decision define and change me and foster a variety of insecurities that manifested in my outward persona. In my early 20s, I started to do things that I felt would get me noticed or bring me validation.

I wrote inflammatory and purposely antagonistic things on social media just to garner a response or feel noticed. I shape-shifted my personality at times to fall in line with what I thought was trendy or would get me the most attention or respect. My identity was off course, and I was overcompensating and over correcting.

I also spent a good chunk of my 20s striving and overworking professionally and in other endeavors looking for success that I could flaunt and receive that validation. I was letting these feelings of inadequacy motivate me, and while that actually resulted in a lot of professional success, it was damaging my heart. I wasn’t trusting the truth that God has already told me I’m enough. I was robbing myself of a lot of purely joyful moments because of my insecurities, many of which were rooted in that admissions decision from IU.

I let my failures be projected onto my personality. I let them define who I was and who I was becoming.

Now in my mid-30s, here’s the truth I’m finally starting to gain a firmer grasp on and find contentment in: While a college admissions officer might see you as “LMO,” that is far from how God sees you, and it’s far from how you should see yourself.

There are nearly eight billion people in the world today, and there is no telling how many people have walked this earth. Still, the book of Matthew reminds us how unique we truly are, that we don’t have to change for anyone or anything. We don’t have to project some phony persona to impress people or achieve validation.

We are all made in the image of God, but we each have different qualities, characteristics and personality traits that literally no one else in the world has. Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew that the hairs on their head are numbered and that God knows them each by name. All these people on the earth, and yet God still wants to have a personal relationship with you. How cool is that?

In Isaiah, we see the beautiful image of God being the potter and us the clay. We are the work of his hand, each of us a beautiful masterpiece.

Even when we fail or the world tells us we’re “LMO,” God has a better plan and truth for us. But He’s calling us to enter into that as our genuine self, not to change for the approval of this world (Romans 12:2). You are fearfully and wonderfully made, and in God’s eyes, you are never like anyone else. 

All of us have stories like mine with IU, where we’ve felt inadequate, like we didn’t measure up, or that we don’t belong. We’ve let bitterness and envy take root and grow into some really ugly characteristics.

Sometimes we let our failures blossom into a pervasive sin issue that leads to more catastrophic circumstances. At times, our failures can also fuel fear and prevent us from pursuing something because we’re afraid of failing again.

No matter the weight, you can be redeemed from it all. Don’t let your failures, disappointments or rejections blind you from the beauty that God has on the other side of those experiences. He’s just waiting for you to show up as your genuine self and ask for help.