Okay, ABBA, almond-studded chocolate, and sparse pasta dinner- let's chase the blues away together.
I had another one of those moments today- the golden hours of expectation that spin themselves into ash in all of the twenty-three seconds it takes to read to an e-mail. As you know, it's been an uphill battle as far as trying to elbow my way into university. Uphill battle is quickly becoming an understatement. Let's now call it ice climbing an 89 degree wall.
I finally had the courage to send my e-mail off to one of my top schools. I've written it and revised it, deleted it, fished it out of the computer's trash bin, deleted it permanently ten minutes later, re-written it, and worried it down to the decision of choosing to open with "To whom it may concern (colon)" or "Dear Sir or Madam (colon)". Finally, it slipped into the streams of hopes, dreams, and mediocrities that is the world of inbox-to-inbox communication. Close the laptop, go to work, don't think about it.
Of course, I did think about it. So much that, a mere hour later, I stole away into a corner of the room and checked my e-mail. It was not a good middle of the work day decision. The response was familiar. Allow me to pull out the fancy words and mechanical utterances of sympathy for you.
-----
Dear Miss Jones,
your resumé is excellent and [institution] is extremely impressed with the caliber of projects that you have chosen to take on between graduation and getting your degree. It's very cute of you. Unfortunately, our merit aid is limited to students with stereotypically excellent high school records and no matter how hard you work on external pursuits of note, our system will not reward you for perseverance that hasn't taken place behind a number 2 pencil. We're a pretty damn good school and that means that you aren't really special unless you have the same track record as everyone else that applies from secondary school institutions with a 4.0. Wait, or are a diversity factor. Is there any Native American in you? No? That sucks, you might have had something there. We, of course, do not wish to discourage you from applying to [institution] in the future, we are just warning you that there is little chance of merit aid, which we largely base on financial need, although there is a separate package for that completely (which you also do not qualify for, even if your parents have excommunicated you to Siberia, until you are 27). We wish you the best with your adorable projects and aspirations. Aspirations are good! Keep having those!
Sincerely,
[office drone who is probably also a graduate of this prestigious school- we have 99% placement!]
P. S. Have you considered community college?
-----
I'm not bitter.
Okay, I'm totally bitter. I am completely and utterly bitter.
I am so frustrated that I want to march into each and every one of these admissions offices and look them in the eyes and ask, "Can you remember the exact moment at which your institution began to protect its impressive walkways and vaulted ceilings instead of the pursuit of knowledge occurring beneath them? Can you pinpoint the hour and the day that you chose to become a company instead of a place where diversity in learning is celebrated?" I am not saying that I am the ideal candidate, perhaps those schools are too good for me as a student, but there is no respect for the idea that people's passions may indeed guide them to go about things in a different way, not in a way that caters to the status quo, but that caters to the invisible and beautiful drive to do something to fulfill some unspoken and very human need. That schools do not encourage diversity in applicants and learning will be a great downfall of our generation. We can no longer rely on these places to be anything other than a stepping stone- our potential is not decided by them. We are so quick to ascribe our worth as human beings and the quality of our education to the name of the institutions that we have passed through. But education relies on so much more than a building and a curriculum. This is proved by every girl that takes five SAT II's and studies for them by the sound of breaking bottles and by every boy that has first worked as a janitor in a school, before becoming a member of the student body. Unless we begin learning for ourselves, for the betterment of our character and our minds, and not for some vague social niche, we will quickly encounter intellectual stagnation and polarization. It is all around us now. Find the exact opposite of whatever you have been assigned and read that, too. Do it every time. Explore the things that are censored by silence. That is well roundedness, not the much-praised A in Chemistry, A in English, A in Art. It cannot be denied that such a report card is good and should get you many claps on the back, but if you are breaking your back to succeed in something that you are not good at and couldn't care less about- then you are wasting time to excel in the things where your gifts and heart lie, and all of the claps on the back in the world will not be able to salvage the opportunities that will have withered in the wake of pursuing the mold for generic success.
So here is my advice. Instead of treating college like this almighty, all-powerful thing that controls your destiny, instead of treating it like the only way to gain necessary knowledge, instead of treating it like the destination, treat it like what it is- a way to get somewhere else. Modern institutions are not the open staircases of Plato and Aristotle's day, where men met to learn things simply for the sake of learning them. We cannot bemoan the loss of such opportunities, because that in and of itself would be ignorance. Those courtyards still exist, but now the voices are in the billions. It's the internet. It's the library. It's that mechanic who lives on your street. Hey, you've always been interested in cars. You're never going to be a mechanic…so? Degrees are for jobs. Learning is for living. I'm not saying don't go to college, I'm saying go because it has something to do with the attainment of ultimate goals, not just because "everyone is doing it". And as everyone now knows, college is the new financial equivalent of "if all of your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you do it too?" The companies that provide loans will gleefully inform your mother that "hell yes, you'll do it too." She will then sign on the dotted line to foot that very risk with all of the strength in her bank account, because this culture of complacency is no more obvious than in the way that we refuse to challenge education for what it has become.
Treat the process as if schools are not shopping for students, you are shopping for a university. This is intellectual prostitution at its absolute finest- and don't think for a moment that these places are looking out for you, because they aren't. They are businesses and like any business it is possible to exploit the system as much as it seeks to exploit you. Sell yourself, do not shake in your boots because your Advanced Math grade is terrible. Instead, look at what you're good at. Sure, you can memorize two pages of Shakespeare, but you can't recall the quadratic formula. If a school will not accept you because of this, perhaps it isn't the right place for you to be. In your essays and your applications, list with confidence and pride the things that you are truly satisfied with. Do not invest in things that will destroy your individuality and make your life a study in regret, with the diploma to prove it. Go somewhere where you feel stimulated by your surroundings and your peers. If that is Harvard, find a way to go to Harvard. If it's beauty school and you scored a 2300 on your SAT, go to beauty school and read War and Peace in Russian on break. Explore every possibility, not just the brochures that the guidance counselors hand you. At the end of the day, your work ethic and your approach to the accumulation and application of knowledge both theoretical and practical will define who you are as a student and an individual and where you gained that knowledge will not matter in the least. When you are applying for a job, if you are a person that you cannot even recognize, all of the degrees from Harvard in the world will not save you. If you acquire a position at the top of the best law firm in New York City and you couldn't care less about what that means, then you have failed. Granted, it is difficult to advance past a point in any career if the love of the thing is not there. There will always be someone who cares enough to work the day and night shift to take that position from you, and when they do, they'll be better at it because it is of a deep and profound value to them that you cannot begin to understand
It seems like we have come to believe that our worth depends entirely on pieces of paper. This is not new. You are four years old and the teacher hangs up your cleanest coloring, so perfectly within the lines. You are four years old and your hands are leaving grime and lunch on the picture that you are clutching beneath your desk. You know it was better, because purple is a much better color for the sky than blue. You know it was better. Why doesn't she? It hurts. You are eighteen and you get a school-wide award for excellence in English and it is empty. In the sleeve of your graduation gown you have rolled up the cheaply printed certificate of some local greenhouse's $500 scholarship. You are embarrassed by it, but keep it close to your skin anyway. You know that the greenhouse hosts several weekend sales a year to put together the money for it, but it means less to the crowded room than this great and anonymous endowment that you are about to receive. You know it is important, but do not understand why you are afraid to say such a thing aloud. It hurts. You are suddenly fifty and a song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers comes on the radio while you're driving home from a company dinner. The award that you received there sits on the seat beside you. The manuscript that you scribbled out in a feverish set of drunken nights in the first two years of college, accompanied only by the very same RHCP album that this song is from, is somewhere under a stack of economics notes in the attic. You are vividly aware of this dusty thing that long since should have been forgotten. Your name is about to go on a plaque in the front lobby of a very tall building in a very big city. There isn't a soul alive aside from yourself who has seen a single word of your great American novel. And you know what? It hurts.
I constantly need to remind myself that at the end of everything, the only person that I have to answer to is myself. I can get as good of an education going to community college and spending hours of extra work to make up for the disadvantage as I can at Yale, where those extra hours are built in. If a "high-level" school is what you feel will satisfy, then fight for a place in one, but I firmly do not believe that it will make or break you in the end of things. It will be your willingness to fight that will continue to define how you move from Point A to Point B. Learning has not a single thing to do with walls or buildings.
And if you go to the high school I attended, if your dreams lie beyond New Hampshire, if your dream is not UNH or Plymouth or Keene, then don't waste time on them. If those places will get you where you need and hope to be, take advantage of them in every way that you possibly can and avoid being taken advantage of. It's well past time to remind institutions everywhere that they work for the student and no one else.
As for those rejection letters or subtle snubs? I will store them away for days when I am feeling discouraged and use the accumulation of them to make me angry, because being angry is better than being made docile by failure. And one day, when I have fought for every step in the right direction and have become all of the things I ever wanted, I will choose to be as proud as the things I have learned that have no degree or certification as whatever will someday hang on my wall. I have learned and am continuing to learn that my value is not in the things I have accomplished, but the things that I dare to accomplish, with or without permission.
2.9.12
11:29 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment