I don't know if I'm being emotional or if my disappointment is justified
I honestly haven't been able to stop thinking about this since yesterday, so I'm just going to write it all out.
For the last 6 months, my friend and I have been deeply involved in our college's innovation and incubation activities. We're only 2nd years. In that time we've done hackathons, won competitions, built projects, ran awareness programs at schools and polytechnic institutions, organized events, and represented our college in multiple activities. Weekends, holidays, you name it, we gave it up without a second thought because we genuinely loved the work.
We didn't do it for rewards. We did it because it felt meaningful.
Our incubation manager has always been supportive and we trusted him a lot. Whenever he needed help, we showed up. No questions asked.
Yesterday I accidentally found out that a new team had been selected for a major opportunity.
The part that hurt wasn't that they were chosen. That's completely fine, other students deserve chances too.
The part that destroyed me was that nobody even told us it was happening.
I found out from another student who assumed we already knew. My heart just sank in that moment.
Since then I've been going in circles:
- Were those 6 months of effort completely invisible?
- Did our contributions actually mean anything?
- Were we just useful when there was work to be done and forgotten the rest of the time?
- Did I completely misread my place in all of this?
I know nobody owes me anything. I know opportunities aren't guaranteed. But I genuinely cannot pretend this doesn't hurt.
What's making it worse is that I feel guilty for being hurt. I've always tried to stay positive and support others. Feeling this disappointed feels almost hypocritical.
Right now I'm just sad, confused, and really unmotivated.
Has anyone been through something like this, in college clubs, startups, organizations, anywhere, where you gave everything and then felt completely overlooked? How did you actually get through it?