"Instead of a daily sales goal, I reversed the normal rules of the game and developed a daily rejection goal. If I wasn’t getting rejected, I wasn’t trying hard enough. If I got a lot of rejections, I made my goal… Sometimes rejection can be a good teacher, and sometimes you almost need to seek it out to be freed from it."

These words of wisdom come from Friends of the High Line Co-Founder Robert Hammond, who gave the commencement address at this year’s graduation ceremony at The New School. To demonstrate his point to the graduates, Robert brought with him his stack of rejection letters for jobs he applied for after college, and talked about the counterintuitive lessons he learned as he made his way in his career.

Watch a video [2] to listen to the speech, or read the full text [3] on Metropolis.

Thank you to The New School for inviting Robert to speak, and congratulations to the graduates!