Getting let go at nineteen is a setback at nineteen. Your future didn’t get the pink slip.

Losing a job early lands hard partly because you have so little else to weigh it against. With few years behind you, one event fills the whole frame and starts to feel like a statement about your prospects. It is not. A hiring decision is made about a role, a budget and a moment, and it carries no information about the next forty years.

Give yourself a few days to be angry, then treat what follows as logistics. Line up references, a clearer account of what you did, the next applications. Momentum does more for the feeling than reassurance does.