Mutterings on College

So December 15th has come and gone. I've endured the nerve-destructing wait, I've experienced that flash of incredible excitement seeing "Congratulations! Welcome to the Yale Class of 2011" pop up on my screen. I've screamed, I've danced, I've hugged a lot more people than I can remember hugging since the end of TASP.

I'm still pausing to think about it several times a day. I got into Yale. YALE.

It's pretty unbelieveable, I'll start there. Until just about six months ago, I never thought I would apply to any ivy league schools, let alone get in to one. I was never that "type" of kid in high school. I'm smart, but not the smartest. I'm a good writer, but certainly not (anywhere near) the best I know. I'm not full obscure intellectual knowledge and well-versed in the canon of western philosophy, I haven't seen every Fellini movie (or any, if you must know), and I didn't start seventeen clubs for political and social discourse at my school. What did I do to deserve this?

The answer, quite simply, is nothing. I haven't pulled myself through a hard life and succeeded despite of adversities, or even worked my ass off every day of high school for this. I'm just a bright kid with affluent parents who succeeded in exactly the ways expected of her. I got good grades, I won some competitions. SO WHAT?

These things speak very little to me as a person. In some way I suppose they label me as "passionate" or "driven" (or "fucking obsessive," to remove the euphemisms), but they say very little about my personal value. I guess that shouldn't be a shock. Getting into college has nothing to do with your worth as a person. People have been saying this to me forever, I've been thinking it forever. I could rattle off a long list of names of people who are smarter, more interesting, more creative, more "deserving" (whatever that means) of Yale than I am who won't be going there next year. Yet we're led to believe that this is it, this is what matters, on a near daily basis. The first words out of every adult I talk to these days are, "so, where do you want to go to college?"

And YES, I won't lie, it feels damn good that I can now tell people Yale. I'm going to fucking Yale. It's true. People like to hear that. They like to know they can quantify me as smart and hardworking and worthy just based on that one little four letter word. Forget my 32 on the ACT (worse than tons and tons of people who got rejected, if college confidential is any indication). Forget my lackluster academics. Forget the fact that before junior year I did very little outside of school. None of it matters anymore once you can say you got into Yale. My guidance counselor and principal love it because they think it makes them seem more impressive (yeah, guidance counselor, thanks for writing me a letter full of spelling errors and random grammatical mistakes). My dad is intensely proud because his family was working class and he paid his own way through college and now his daughter is going to be a student at arguably the "best" college in the country.

And why not, I guess? We all give value to arbitrary things at some point or another. It just seems so unfair in this case that I just happen to have the skill set for this. I did nothing for it. NOTHING. Really, this whole ivy league thing is a major downer. It makes lots of fantastic people who don't or can't get in feel like losers, and goes straight to the heads of many of those who do. I've watched a lot of my friends get really disheartened because GOD FORBID they only got a 2000 on their SATs or they've only taken one college class or they're only in three clubs. Even for me, it's been a major reason (not that I really need another, I'm a pretty skilled self-deprecate-er) to question myself and everything i do. really, tt's not like getting in makes you anything of a better person, or that Yale is the only place one can get a good education. To think so is utterly ridiculous.

Still, I can't help myself. Despite all this bitterness, I'm excited. Louise Gluck teaches the introductory poetry classes, there are people on the Yale accepted student boards who've started their own record labels and charities, and sorry to be shallow, but the campus is absolutely gorgeous. If i want to, I can be around these people, this place next year. I've been given that option. Sure, I'm lucky, but it's an incredible opportunity I don't want to pass up just because I feel somewhere in the realm of vaguely to ridiculously guilty about it. Yale is no guarantee of anything- success, intellectual growth, etc- those things i have to do on my own. But Yale could be the springboard, and a damn good one at that. I certainly don't think it's the only way to these things, or that there aren't many people Yale turns its nose up who will turn out to be incredible people, but for me, it could just be the right thing.

So that was probably far more than you wanted to know about my thoughts on the college process. But there it is. And I want you to know I believe that you're all incredible people destined for incredible futures. I don't care at all whether or not you go to ivies or whatever (though I'll take this moment to say another congrats to Fuyuo, Tracy, Katharine, and Miranda). You're still some of the best people I think I'll ever know. In fact, my only real fear for college is that the peope I meet won't measure up to all of you.

All the best from your somewhat disillusioned, trying not to be elitist, but secretly somewhat pleased comrade,
Ryan