20 14 HIGH SOCIETY’S
College Issue
VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 HIGH SOCIETY // COLLEGE ISSUE 1
HIGH SOCIETY:
The College Edition Volume 4, Issue 2 Interested in being published in High Society? Please e-mail all questions and comments to Juliette Kenn de Balinthazy at jkenndebalinthazy15@choate.edu, and all submissions to choatehighsociety@gmail.com. All submissions are reviewed anonymously.
2013-2014 EDITORIAL BOARD Juliette Kenn de Balinthazy EDITOR IN CHIEF Taha Anwar MANAGING EDITOR Andrea Wang ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Elizabeth Walbridge FACULTY ADVISOR
The year is coming to a close, and the Class of 2014 is preparing to move forward to a new stage in their lives. In this issue, members of the graduating class share their words with you through the final, most daunting writing task of high school-- the notorious college essay. We hope you can learn from, and relate to their thoughts and experiences. Juliette and I would like to extend a momentous thank-you to Taha Anwar for his hard work and dedication to the High Society editorial board of 2013-’14. Taha, we wish you well in your future endeavors. -Andrea Wang
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Contents Chasing the Elephant Looking for Hogwarts The Mantis Shrimp Borders Age and Essence The Day I Became A Man The Nose Knows Genderally Pissed Unprepared Teen Applicant: Looking at the College Process
Special thanks to this issue’s contributors: Grace Alford-Hamburg Taha Anwar Gabriel Davis Aaron Holmes Anna Horowitz Margaryta Maliukova Virginia Ogden Eleonora Saravalle Alexandra Schwartz Ming-jun Wilson
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Chasing the Elephant I grew up when I learned to see elephants in the dark. The initiation began in my English class, when Mr. James asked us to interpret a poem by Thoreau. “Woof of the Sun, ethereal gauze...” In a literature class in my home country, I would have spent thirty seconds on this assignment. My textbook contained an analysis of every text we were required to read. I would no more than skim a page, however difficult. My eyes ran over the words, but I let critics tell me what they meant. As soon as I finished a poem or story, its words instantly vanished from my mind. What stuck was the simple gist of it. There were no more experts to guide me now. Released from their secure and reassuring grip, I groped alone in the darkness of the poem. Its words made me stumble with every step I took. Wrapped in multiple layers of metaphors, their shapes were mockingly beguiling. Could I trust my senses to guess what they were? “Breakers of air, billows of heat…” I spent hours fumbling through the words until a picture emerged in the dark. Mist! The image struck me with a flash of illuminating force. As if someone had switched on the light, I could finally see the meaning of the poem. I closed my book, but the mist was still on my mind. I walked the stairs contemplating Thoreau’s image. I saw it for a long time even in bed, long after the last of the library lights went out. The beauty of the mist was such that no critic could have painted. “So what is Thoreau talking about?” Mr. James’ voice hushed the residual side-talk. In the breathtaking silence that followed, I swear I could hear a drumroll. We went around the room. Fog. Dew. Cloud. Rain. Waves. I felt my heart palpitate with every answer I did not identify as mine. That meant, as I soon found out, just about all of them. “And the answer is... heat-waves.” Like a product of wishful thinking, a heat wave seemed to invade our room. We had all been wrong. Without critics to guide me, I had misinterpreted the poem. Mr. James waited a moment before adding: “But all of you are right.” A consolation prize, maybe? How could one thing be mist, rain and waves all at once? That the mist was real, I was ready to argue before the Supreme Court. Thoreau had painted a vivid metaphoric picture of it in my mind. Now, however, I began to perceive its vastness. Each of us who had trodden through the poem had had a mere glimpse of Thoreau’s picture. Like the blindfolded men in the Indian legend, who perceived parts of an elephant’s body by touch, we had seen parts of a greater truth. Just like those men, however, we erroneously identified the whole with its part. Mist, rain, and heat-waves were true as
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individual perceptions. Only together, though, could we see the entire picture. As I grew up when I learned to interpret books, so I believe my country will become a nation of readers. My college diploma will serve me well if I can use it to promote literature education in my country. We have long trusted critics to take us around writers’ figurative language. It is time to let go of their paternal hand. We must walk in the darkness unafraid of tripping on words. For if the future finds us off our feet, we will have stumbled upon our elephant. t
Looking for Hogwarts Spooning cereal into my mouth, I kept one eye trained outside the kitchen window. It was August 31st, 2007. I awaited my owl from Hogwarts. I knew that traditionally the owl came earlier, so families could respond by July 31st, but maybe they changed the protocol? I knew I had no way of getting to King’s Cross in London by 11 o’clock the next day, but what if international students received special transportation? I knew that Hogwarts wasn’t real, but I didn’t believe it. So I waited for my owl. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the first chapter book I read on my own. Although my parents had read all the other ones aloud, I grew tired of the one-chapter-a-night approach. I stole the blue book and underlined words I didn’t know. The lines are still there, crooked caterpillars crawling across the page. When first grade ended, I could barely struggle through a picture book; when second grade started, my parents set limits on how many hours per day I could read. They said five. I said seven. We settled on six. Even when I was in trouble, though, they never took away my books. I wrote my first story in October of second grade. Preparations for Halloween were in full swing, so naturally it featured a pumpkin named Fred. Fred came from a pumpkin patch atop a hill. One day he rolled off his vine and down the hill on the adventure of a lifetime. I haven’t stopped writing since. There’s a rush that comes with writing. With a few strokes of the keyboard, I can build a world or tear it down. I can make you laugh or cry, love or hate. Maybe I can’t cast a spell, but my characters can. The power of a single word is constantly underestimated in our world, but I will never make that mistake. That old playground maxim is dead wrong: broken bones heal, but words bury themselves deep. In case you were wondering, my owl never came. I was lost, until I discovered I could go to boarding school in America. Choate wasn’t Hogwarts, but it was exactly what I needed. For the first time, my classes required work. Obviously, I signed up for every creative writing course that fit into my schedule. And my junior year, I went abroad to France.
Je crois qu’il serait triste d’être une peinture dans la meme salle que La Joconde. I think it would be sad to be a painting in the same room as the Mona Lisa. Monsieur Poupard had instructed us to describe how we felt viewing the Mona Lisa. I wrote about the solitude of the other paintings on the walls, then connected it to my feelings within the throng of sweaty tourists. The writing was stunted, awkward, but for the first time in five years of French study, I’d said what I meant in another language. As I reread the piece in my host mother’s living room, violins thrummed through my veins. For so long, I’d feared that learning French would somehow erase my fluency in English. It never occurred to me that I might be able to write in French the way I did in English, wielding those same tricks of storytelling and scene. Concrete details! Figurative language! They all still worked. How had I not realized this before? My life—like everyone’s—is a tale of tales, a story of stories. What fascinates me are the millions of ways we have of sharing them. Different languages have different strengths (English is often called a “technical language” because it’s so precise), but they all allow us to connect in amazing ways. I love the way just the right word, just the right detail can pull someone else into my world, or me into theirs. So, did it work? Do you understand my story now? t
The Mantis Shrimp The mantis shrimp can perceive both polarized light and multispectral images; they have the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom. Human eyes have color receptors for three colors (red, green, and blue); the mantis shrimp has receptors for sixteen types of color, enabling them to see a spectrum far beyond the capacity of the human brain. What might they be able to see that we cannot? What are we missing?
Our world is an ever-changing work of art. It possesses great beauty, but like all paintings, is difficult to fully understand. The mantis shrimp has a great gift in its perceptual abilities, permitting it to view our complex world more completely than all other animals. We marvel at what it must perceive. The mantis shrimp, a fierce predator, explores the ocean floor. Its complex eyes scan the ocean and detect the most minute and esoteric of underwater organisms. As it seeks out its prey, the mantis shrimp observes the diversity of life under the sea. It views our world with excellent awareness of its environment. Humans, due in part to our perceptual inferiorities, have only explored three percent of marine life present in the Earth’s oceans. Able to perceive ultraviolet and infrared light, the mantis shrimp sees a limitless amount of marine life. It could see anything from the Loch Ness Monster to camouflaged octopi that the most diligent marine scientists are try-
ing to discover. The mantis shrimp’s view surely includes a collection of species unknown to humans. It may gaze at the elusive Cronus fish, fixed on devouring its progeny, and at the Thoreau ray, a species tending to seclude itself in the marine wilderness. The mantis shrimp’s remarkable gift of sight reminds us of our limitations. We only see a 300-nanometer range of electromagnetic wavelengths. Through a telescope, we are limited in seeing planets that may contain life, because we are incapable of seeing infrared light. If we had the mantis shrimp’s vision, we might even be able to achieve the unthinkable, such as seeing air on a windy day. With the mantis shrimp’s natural equipment, we could see beauty and multiple colors in a simple rock. Instead, our limited view remains our weakness and forces us to live with many of our questions left unanswered. Conceivably, our weakness is our greatest strength. We aren’t missing anything; instead we gain distinct human qualities. Not knowing the answers may be frustrating, but it fills our lives with challenges. We must pose questions. We formulate hypotheses that are incorrect; still, we learn through this process. Leading up to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, James Watson made several errors until he arrived at the correct conclusion. Now, he forever stands as one of the most influential modern scientists. His discovery gives us an understanding of our characteristics on the molecular level, but also provides insight into ourselves as humans. Being wrong represents an integral part of human nature and the scientific method that fills research with excitement. Today, thousands of physicists are striving to explore the phenomenon of dark energy, which we cannot see. They are persistent despite their limitations, creating high-technology telescopes and encouraging more ingenuity. Unlike anything else in the animal kingdom, humans have a shared passion for answering perplexing questions. The mantis shrimp is a marine anomaly, possessing a store of information and abilities desired by humans. Our inability to see exactly through the arthropod’s complex eyes ignites our quest for discovery. Compared to the mantis shrimp, we may stand as primitive innovators, only perceiving a microcosm of what the universe possesses. Still, we are like Arthur C. Clarke’s Moon-Watcher reaching his arms up towards the moon, inspired to understand more about our unanswered questions. t
Borders Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.
I didn’t speak Hebrew. I had no idea where I was going or how I would get there. I knew just a little Arabic. I had never crossed a border by myself, and I didn’t know if I had enough money to get through Israel. I was paranoid my bags wouldn’t pass through, or
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I would lose my passport, or go the wrong way. I was scared of the guards and the questioning. What if they turned me back? I was only seventeen. For the first time since I arrived in the Middle East, I didn’t know if I could do it. Crossing the Jordanian-Israeli border was an idea borne out of practicality. I spent one month in Jordan studying Arabic, and before leaving home, I was accepted into a fellowship for a camp in Hungary. Flying back to Connecticut and out again made no sense, so I agreed with my parents to cross the border and stay around Tel Aviv before flying to Budapest. The Sheikh Hussein Bridge, where I crossed, stood near Beit She’an, a town in Israel’s northeast tip. From there, I arranged only my final destination, on the other side of Israel, 75 miles away. I could have contacted a taxi company or a friend, but I thought I should “go rugged.” I wanted desperately to be independent. Now, breathing deeply was all I could do not to harbor doubts. As my driver approached the bridge, I flitted between thoughts of encouragement and self-reproach. How were you so stupid? Everything a phone call away, and you turned it down! No, that’s all talk; you can do it. I know you can! Suppressed doubts collected at the front of my thoughts and burst, coalescing into a note of raw fear. My movements slowed to a crawl, as if walking too fast might shatter the ground. The monuments of international law loomed, and the guards eyed my suitcases and me silently. Hey—you did nothing wrong; just be calm, I reminded myself. I proceeded forward. The questions will take twenty minutes max.
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The questions took over an hour. A woman asked about everything from the gifts I bought, to my parents’ work, while four employees tore apart my luggage. I felt my neck muscles bulge, blood moving faster as time ticked away. I was rooted to the spot, horrified, collapsing internally as the responses tumbled from my jaws. Yet before her examination ended, something occurred to me: this border crossing wasn’t a problem; it was an opportunity! If you can cross just one little border, what can’t you do? The woman’s words faded; my thoughts grew bigger. All through this year, you’ve gotten more independent. You traveled by yourself, you met friends, and here you are, going solo in a different continent. The ground stopped moving. This is more than independence,: this is conquering your fears. You can’t set up or anticipate the borders in your life. They just happen, whether you like it or not. You didn’t want to do this; you were forced to, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe there’s something beautiful about facing your anxieties, with no preparation whatsoever. Think how it will be when you reach the other side! Think how it will feel to sock insecurity in the face! So don’t be scared. You want to cross this border? Conquer your fears. 68 minutes later, the woman walked away, speaking quietly with her comrades. I watched their facial expressions shift through uncertainty. She turned back around and waved me on through. I expelled a huge breath, repacked my belongings, and exited the building. In Hungary I received a journal with one quote. It read: “Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere; sometimes, in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.” I came to the Jordanian-Israeli border a child. I found a man. t
Age and
Essence Age 11 (bliss): Wow! Playing at Carnegie Hall feels so cool! I love flipping the tails of my tux when I sit down, and the applause ringing through the big hall makes me very happy. I am so thankful I won my first international competition because the other winners play much harder pieces. I talked with one guy who played really well, but I had trouble understanding his technical talk about chord progressions and expression. It’s fine. As long as I play the most impressive pieces, I’ll keep on winning competitions. Age 14 (awakening): I don’t understand. The Tchaikovsky Concerto is one of the hardest pieces on earth, and I gave a very strong performance. Sure, I had some mistakes, but not even an honorable mention, not even a discretionary award? Today’s disappointing result is not some isolated incident either; I’ve been losing too many competitions in the past few years. My teacher’s look of dismay and bewilderment still burns my mind. But I just don’t understand what I’m missing! I play all the notes; my pieces are harder than what others play; yet the judges only focus on minute details: “You play too loudly.” “You didn’t crescendo in this passage.” “You need to learn what dolce means.” Maybe the judges are right. The competitors I meet seem to love every minute of practicing, and they play every note with the utmost control and grace. But I can’t honestly say I have the same passion. How do I obtain their ceaseless, absolute devotion? Clearly my enjoyment has withered away, leaving only the insatiable desire to win and compete. Perhaps my failures involve more than just missing minute details; maybe I’ve missed a whole world of music. Yes, I admit I believed virtuosity alone produces success, and as a result I have neglected my musicianship. Learning pieces grows more and more tedious because I have placed ambition over enjoyment and technique over expression. I see my problem, and I want to make a new start – a fresh approach to music. I want to learn the secret behind expressing music and love practicing a passage fifty or a hundred times. Age 17 (knowledge): I play Chopin’s C minor Nocturne, trying my best to embody the composer’s expression. I see the piece grow from a controlled statement to a desperate cry, and I feel the melody’s desperate attempts for release and resolution. The hymnlike interlude is insufficient, and the melody can only resign to its doomed fate. I connect to this piece, for I recall my own sense of bewilderment and confusion when I failed repeatedly, when my motivation sank and my hope faltered. The moments of frustration and dissatisfaction with my previous musical state, the wondering and questioning about my musical purpose – all flow through my
fingers to the keys. I close my eyes and know the power of music. But, unlike the nocturne, I will not give up. I almost quit piano to pursue other ambitions, but my budding love for music convinces me to remain. After studying the composers’ lives and music theory, I finally understand the connection between notes on a page to sentiments from the heart. I realize music means more than mere beautiful sound, for it possesses the power to relate the deepest pains and pleasures. The dissonance of Prokofiev’s 7th Sonata used to cause displeasure, but upon learning its purpose as protest to Stalin’s tyranny, I play the harsh tones with renewed vigor and conviction. Now I see why music is so valuable, why elderly couples used to thank me in tears. Music expresses our beliefs and emotions to the world, moving beyond the confines of language, age, or ethnicity. Now I can finally practice for three or four hours and feel as if only minutes have passed. Now I value music’s intrinsic power far above any competition award. t
The Day
I Became A Man I distinctly remember the day that I turned into a man. I was an innocent and curious 13 year old, unaware that my childhood was about to be stolen from me. It all started off pretty normally; I woke up and had to use all my willpower to make the 15-foot trek from my bedroom to the bathroom. Once I washed my face and was able to open my eyes wide enough to look at my reflection in the mirror in front of me, I realized that I had become a man overnight. A single hair majestically stood erect on my chin glinting in the light from the drops of water that were beginning to collect and cling to it, like forbidden fruit precariously hanging from a tree branch in the Garden of Eden. Immediately awake, I marveled at the beauty of my first glance into manhood. These extra millimeters of matter were about to change virtually everything in my life. I would now be able to shave, get into rated R movies, drive, vote, and get married. You know, man things. Getting ready for school that morning, I fluffed up my hair in an attempt to display my newfound manhood like a medal to my peers. But as soon as I got to school, it very quickly became apparent that I wasn’t the same person. I had become a man, and I was very different. I began to think that I was above everyone else and noticed that everyone around me was a child. I genuinely felt completely out of place. Life wasn’t as new or exciting anymore; I didn’t run around gleefully shrieking during capture the flag or laugh at any “Yo Momma” jokes. I had lost my creativity and curiosity; I no longer wondered what was looking down at me when I stared up into the sky. As a man, I was focused what was in front of me with my feet and mind planted on the ground. Most of all, in my day as a man, I stopped dreaming and my imagination was stunted; becoming the President no longer seemed like a possibility because it was too
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unrealistic. I realized then that I didn’t like being a man. I wanted life to always be simple, funny, and full of exciting new opportunities waiting for me to take advantage of. I wanted to be able to have dreams again, and never give up on them no matter how ridiculous they seemed. As soon as I got home from school that day, I borrowed my mom’s scissors and cut off the hair from my chin, removing any traces of the manhood that was. Today, when I look in the mirror, I see both a child and a man staring back at me. I realize now, that what makes a man is his ability to take on responsibility and care for others. Every day in my various leadership positions, I consistently put my peers before myself and dedicate my time and effort to making their lives happier and easier. I’m not a child anymore and I can grow more than just peach fuzz. But I still will always hold onto the creativity, imagination, and lofty aspirations that come along with being a child because, quite frankly, that is something far too precious to ever lose to age. Despite being a man, I still dream unrealistically like a child. From my complicated dreams of spreading education by opening schools in illiterate countries to my simpler dreams of becoming president and shaping the world for the better, I still hold onto my dreams and always will. The child in me dreams of making a positive difference in the lives of people that I come close to, but the man that I am strives to turn that dream into a reality every single day. t
Photo/Merrick Gillies
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The Nose Knows I have my dad’s nose. No, not the nose that could use a good plastic surgeon, but the nose that distinguishes the multiple notes within a fragrance. When I was seven and my father started working at a deodorant factory, I spent hours walking the aisles of fragrance oil bottles at the factory, smelling as many as I could. At a young age, I learned that the nose, a bridge between the eyes and mouth, establishes a vital harmony in the human body; it draws sight and taste together and ties them to smell. Everyone at the factory would play the game of how many fragrances I could name from “smell-memory” after taking a whiff of the oils. Ten years later I have played that game many times, as well as studied fragrances during my summer jobs and lab work, that I can now call myself a beginning “nose,” a smell expert in the fragrance industry. One of the basic principles of perfumery is that opposing smells can be paired to create something greater than the two parts on their own. A “nose,” having a strong understanding of organic chemistry, finds these opposing smells and brings them together in a plausible formula. Like a real nose, a perfumery “nose” is a bridge. But for me, being a “nose” isn’t limited to perfumery. From journalism to cheese-making, I make my separate worlds complement each other. I introduce the field hockey players to the dancers when I have my team come to my open dance rehearsals. I use my journalism and advocacy skills from Write On For Israel when I promote sustainability and conservation with the Choate Conservation Proctors. I start the conversation between Choate Hillel and Choate Muslim Students Organization when I give Israeli and Middle-Eastern snacks to the school for Israel’s Independence Day. My fluent Hebrew and current study of Arabic creates a dialogue between both groups, along with Arabic Club and Choate Friends of Israel, which no other student organizations have the chance to create. The web of my life has shown me that from one endeavor there are many directions to go. I love chemistry and its role in daily life; it is the chemistry of food, perfumery, and cosmetics that I want to pursue. Chemistry is in all aspects of my life; I want to learn its function in each place I find it. So much so, that I even spent two weeks on a farm making mozzarella cheese to see the organic chemistry inherent in everyday life. However, my ultimate future is not yet complete, and I continue to learn new things every day. This has led me to my dream, to start my own cosmetic brand that uses sustainable chemicals while also breaking down cultural barriers around the world. It is a dream of chemistry, languages, conservation, art, and communication. It is a mirror of myself, a bridge between disciplines. Having my dad’s nose defines me. It gives me the ability to be a perfumery “nose” and to find a career that fascinates me, but also teaches me how to be a real nose, uniting the puzzle pieces of my life to create a final masterpiece. t
Genderally Pissed A decade in a single-sex environment made one thing clear: I will never doubt my ability to do any job as well as a man. Without the alleged “distraction” of boys, I never held back from speaking up in class and, thanks to Title IX, I knew I could participate in any sport of my choosing. School was never an overt lesson in women’s rights, but rather a curriculum infused with subliminal messages geared toward female empowerment. My single-sex education equipped me both ethically and educationally. Unfortunately, it also delayed my understanding of the male mind. Trying to figure out the opposite sex in my late teens left me at a disadvantage—it seemed as if everyone else knew what to say, while I was helpless and hopeless when it came to flirting. Admittedly, my instinctive reflex to comply with any DJ’s instructions to “hop three times” did help me thrive in the structured social life of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. But once all the blessings were chanted, it was back to cloistering at my girl’s school. I chose to challenge myself by transferring to Choate for my junior year of high school. I needed a change of scenery in order to widen my perspective on the world. And I quickly learned that forming friendships with boys presents the same challenges as it does with girls—it takes time, an open heart, and a genuine curiosity about people. I still struggled, however, when it came to elevating simple conversation to flirtation. The Choate community encourages learning from failure. I felt comfortable missing a note in Acapella or blankly walking face-first into a glass door at the squash courts, but was terrified of embarrassing myself by taking a chance to speak to a cute boy. I have failed miserably on numerous occasions in my attempts to be flirtatious. Either I conjure up a collection of nonsensical syllables and indelicately spew them in a boy’s face or I attempt to spark conversation with an irrelevant and inaptly timed statement about the deficit or the most recent political scandal that I read about in that morning’s New York Times. I have even reached out to the people I assumed understood me best: my family. My grandma counsels that I must be “primped and pleasant” because it is a woman’s place to entice a man into conversation while my older brother urges that I hold off my search for love until I’m at least twenty-five—he also cautions that he has a baseball bat handy for when that day arrives. So, my grandma suggests anachronistic philosophies that disregard my moral regard while my brother proposes I do nothing to actively seek a relationship while forewarning that he is prepared to intimidate any future boyfriend. Coming into the game so late, I feel as socially inept as a child. But recently I’ve learned that I can take advantage of what I did gain from years of having only girls as classmates: a fearless attitude in the classroom, passionate engagement in my extracurricular activ-
ities, and a strong desire to be none other than myself. If anything, I’ve learned that my preconceptions about flirting were based on the wrong premise; flirting requires a whole other level of gamesmanship that coed school is only beginning to unveil. It’s such a rarity for teenagers to be comfortable in their own skin, but single-sex education gave me a solid sense of self and Choate is letting that self thrive. These days I’m less interested in flirting–the real challenge is investing my time in such passions as prefecting, theater, and squash, and enjoying friendships as they form naturally. Maybe I’ll never be a “flirting machine,” but at least I’ll continue to lead fearlessly and speak up for what I believe in, regardless of my audience’s gender. t
Unprepared It was meticulously planned—every stop, every snack, every bathroom break. A planner by nature, I reviewed these 1,232 miles of detail almost daily leading up to my bike trip down the pacific coast. The facts repeated themselves over and over in my head: Seattle to San Francisco, thirty-one days, flight to Seattle June 26th 11:16am, stop at the Tillamook Cheese factory, no excessive toiletries, three granola bars per day. I embraced these plans like a long-lost friend, clutching them tightly, dwelling on the plans instead of my long list of fears. I was prepared for the trip laid out on paper before me. And as far as I was concerned, the trip was as good as done. But in reality, I was not prepared at all. My trip turned out to be more than 138 pieces of paper in a think manila folder, but a fundamental experience that shaped who I am today. My trip was not the words typed in blunt black ink on stark white paper, but a complete change in the person I know myself to be. No list of FAQs could have prepared me wake up in the middle of the night to a sky so swollen with stars I thought it would burst open into a rain of light. No mile or time count could have shown me how to approach an angry transvestite in a glittery thong for directions. No log of campsites could have told me what to say to my leader as she sat in an ambulance, the snapped bone of her arm jabbing out of her skin. No album of pictures could have equipped me for a view over a sea so breathtaking that I lost my balance. The most powerful points of life are not theoretical but actual experiences that shape us into who we are. It was the active participation that made the true experience for me. After it was all over, I realized that one cannot simply have all the facts of life memorized on the sidelines, but that life must be lived in order to know that anything is for certain, who we are, and why we are here. In the end, we can only be heightened in life by being a participant instead of a bystander. I was reminded that doing is infinitely better than arranging and that watching is a tool we use to live life, not a lifestyle. t
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Teen Applicant:
Looking at the College Process
I was first struck by the similarity between pregnancy and the college process last summer while I was lying in bed around midnight. Before I go on, I think I should put the hearts of the adults in the room at rest. I am not, nor have I ever been pregnant. But I do watch a lot of movies, and an older cousin of mine just became a mother. I have been through the college process, though. I managed to emerge emotionally and mentally unscathed. I cannot say the same for my wrist, which I fear is suffering from the onset of carpal tunnel syndrome. Now, you might be wondering, “What could a process that makes people glow have in common with one that makes teenagers lose color by the day?” When you begin visiting doctors and colleges, you pick up every pamphlet or book offered—“Ready, Steady, Baby,” “XYZ College: A Unique Community,” “Dad’s Pregnant, Too,” “VU: A Connected University.” All these seem to offer the key to the best pregnancy or surest college admission. You also set up weekly appointments with your doctor. In the college process, you do the same with college counselors. You should be nice to these people, because they will tell you how to make a healthy baby and write essays that actually make sense. Soon, you are about 12 to 16 weeks in, the time when most people begin showing. This means that strangers on buses and distant relatives you have not missed for the past twenty years, are fully authorized to poke, prod, and feel your stomach, ask highly invasive questions, and then proceed to ignore your answers by instead offering homemade and superior solutions for how to deal with ankle swelling. If you are sitting in your seat hoping that there is a college equivalent, you are in for a treat. By now you look old enough to be applying to college, so colleagues of you parents’ and family friends who have not seen you since you were “this small” will make no qualms enquiring about your grades, class ranking, top college choice and offering advice on how to write the perfect college essay. I suggest you trust all these people blindly, especially those without children. There are graphs indicating the probability that you will give birth within a certain amount of days from your due date, just as there are graphs that visually show you how few chances you have of being accepted into a school compared to everyone else. You go to baby clothing stores, where everything is arranged neatly by month, forcing non-parents who simply want to buy a gift, to do
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the math to convert years into months. In these baby-blue, rosy— and yellow for those not defined by gender—stores you overlook how smelly these clothes will become when covered in burp residue. Similarly, colleges look perfect and pristine when you first visit them, making you forget how dirty the pathways must become every weekend. But the due-date is approaching and as the baby-proofing gets more intense, so does the typing. Finally, it’s the day. You energetically burst through the double doors that lead to the maternity department, screeching that your water is broken. Nurses appear from nowhere asking you all kinds of questions, distracting you from your duty of yelling about how much pain you are in. Finally, you are in the birthing room, surrounded by a big green, ghastly blob that moves and asks dumb questions like, “Are you in pain?” But wait! The contractions are only 60 to 90 second apart and someone is yelling, “Push! I can see it!” Suddenly the head of the baby is in the green blob’s hands, and the blob is smiling. Similarly, you stalk into the room, flip open your computer and aggressively type “commonapp.org.” Your mother walks by and asks “Have you submitted yet?” as if she can’t see your determined face. You hastily review your application, and when you can’t handle it anymore, you put in your credit card information. The screen goes black, and suddenly, you see it! The electronic signature window slowly appears. You only have to sign your name, but it’s so hard because the window isn’t fully loaded. Your older sibling tells you to push “continue,” and once your name is typed, you do. Then you scream, “I’m done!” I think by now I have proven my point. However, there is one difference that upsets me. When people get pregnant, they often reconsider some of their life-style choices. If they smoke, perhaps they quit. If they drink, maybe they cut down, and sometimes they begin working out more. You might even try to become a nicer person. Unlike pregnancy, though, in the college process there are fewer times when you can sit down and think about whether you want to continue dancing, or running, or debating. What if you want to try competitive origami making? Do colleges want to hear that you are a work in progress just as they say they will encourage you to be when you enroll? Is there space for you to tell them that currently you are rethinking the activities you have done since you were five, if you want to? Perhaps it is just me who is facing these qualms, and one could say I am going through an anticipated mid-life crisis. You can tell my parents that I have not yet bought a fancy sports car. I worry that colleges are encouraging us commit to one of the many things we enjoy, making us define ourselves by one thing before we have had the chance to experience other undertakings. If we see ourselves as a dancer, or an athlete, or a scientist, will we ever have the opportunity to explore our other interests? In short, to those that have navigated the process already, I hope none of you felt you had to contain your desire to reinvent yourselves. And to those of you who will face it in the near future, I hope you keep in mind that you are fully entitled to many more years of creating yourselves: applying to college does not mark the end of that process. Rather, it is the life equivalent of the first of many car seats, the infants/toddlers seat. t
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Highly Quotables There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning. Jiddu Krishnamurti Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. Nelson Mandela If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library. Frank Zappa Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty. Mark Twain