Junior Year Blues

Being a junior in high school is hard work.  PSAT... AP courses... driving a car... so much on the cusp of adulthood yet firmly rooted in childhood, too.  I had a chance to be up close and personal with those living through it last night.

I represented Cornell at the Tucson Unified School District's College Night.  For $200, paid through the generosity of the Cornell Club of Southern Arizona, I was given a table, two chairs, a pen and a bottle of water.  The University provided name tags, flyers filled with information, and colorful bookmarks and postcards with contact information on both sides.  There was no list for interested students to complete, no envelope to collect resumes.  In fact, the University made a specific request that we not accept personal information.  We were to direct the students to the Admissions Office's website, where they could input their own deets.

I love it when a cost saving measure fits neatly into the actor's lifestyle.

Over the last few years, attendance has waned at the Fair.  Five year ago there were busloads of students from Benson and Wilcox and Green Valley, carted in to meet the representatives.  Last night there were no large packs of roving teens, bound together by classroom affiliations.  Those who came, came alone.

Well.... not really alone.  Most had mom or dad in tow.  The parents looked shell-shocked, overwhelmed, tired.  They were old.  The kids were enthusiastic and energized by the possibilities laid out before them.  It made for some interesting interactions.

I stopped counting the number of adults who spoke for their children. By the time he's in high school, I assume a young man is capable of introducing himself without parental assistance.  Apparently, that places me in a small minority of grown ups.  Most of the parents felt the need to speak to the adult manning the table.  Most of the kids were eager to let them take the lead.

I couldn't let that happen.

Over and over, I looked past the parental open mouth and peered into the wide-eyed stare of the student, hoping against hope that she would open her mouth and say something... anything.. to me. Once in a while my look-plus-a-smile was rewarded spontaneously.  More often, the student's eyes darted to the parent. I was incapable of letting it slide.

"Is your Mom applying to Cornell?
"How's your Dad's GPA?"

That often was enough to switch the locus of control back to the student.  Sometimes, stronger methods were required.

I found myself putting the palm of my hand up, like a school crossing guard, to stop the flow of parental bloviation.  I hear myself saying "Shhhh..." to the adults, trying to smile as I raged inside. 

Certainly, mom and dad could extract the information they needed from me in a more efficient manner with pointed questioning.  That wasn't the point.  This is the first of many such settings college students encounter - registration, job fairs, extra curricular round-ups - and it's a good place to practice.  Moms and dads stealing their thunder wasn't helpful at all.

No one grimaced at me; the silenced parents were appropriately abashed and the kids were empowered to speak.  I made sure to mention to the parents that they were starting to enter the part of life where they could no longer protect their children.  The future was not something which could be controlled ... not by the parental units, anyhow.  As members of that P.U. club, we sighed together.  Letting go is hard; it helps to know that others know it, too.

The fun began once I got the kids talking.  I met the musicians and mining engineers and psychologists and biologists of tomorrow.  I encouraged a broad exposure to the liberal arts in conversations that ranged from life on the reservation to animal husbandry. I talked to a young man who speaks four languages and plays the violin and the piano.  I met a stunning African-American girl whose mother wants her to model and go to college in New York. I met a host of kids with 3.8 GPA's who never considered the Ivy League at all.

"Do you have great grades?"
"Do you have high test scores?"
"Are you taking the most difficult courses your school offers?"

It was fun to watch their faces light up as they nodded their "Yes, I do!"'s over and over again.

Suddenly, they were operating in another realm, one where a fabulous education at a good school was something they could consider.  With my explanation of the financial aid programs currently in place, concerns  were allayed and smiles were restored.  The how can I afford it was replaced by can I get in.

It was a lovely transition to watch.

No, you can't learn cosmetology or forensic science at Cornell.  Yes, Ithaca is very cold and very far from Tucson.  Yes, there are choirs and chamber orchestras.  The soccer and football teams have devoted fans.  Movie theaters exist there.  Amidst the nonsense and the angst and the noise and the crowds, I was in a Big Red oasis of brains and natural beauty. 

I hope one or two of them actually apply.

Did the Mail Come Yet?

It used to be that April 15th was as relevant to high school seniors as it was to their parents.  While the grown-ups were busily putting the final touches on their tax forms before dropping them into the mailbox, the seniors were lined up on the curbstones, waiting for the first glimpse of the mail carrier. 

College acceptance letters were received on April 15th.  It was a big day.

Now, with the proliferation of rolling and early admissions, the process is more diffuse.  Some students know where they're going before Thanksgiving, adding a touch of Congratulations to their holiday celebrations.  Some find out that they're not going where they wanted to go, that they will be spending their holidays finishing applications to schools that are okay but not what I wanted.  All that parental encouragement to finish those other applications so they would be ready to slip into the mail if the worst occurred seem oddly prescient all of a sudden. It doesn't make completing them any easier, though.

This is the first time that kids really stand on their own. Unless Dad or Mom is a Trustee or a major donor there's really no one on the admissions side who wants to hear their kids' tale of woe.  Judged on their own accomplishments, taken or refused based on what they wrote and what they have done, their egos are very much on the line.

As Big Cuter sighed while waiting for his Georgetown letter, it's a very personal matter.  "I just want them to like me, Mom."

I wanted to go to University of Pennsylvania more than anything in the whole wide world.  I wanted an urban campus a train ride away from my east coast anchors - NYC and Washington, DC.  I wanted to walk where Ben Franklin walked.  Unfortunately, they didn't want me.

I remember G'ma's insistence that I go to school, just as I did on every Tuesday.  How have I remembered that it was a Tuesday?  1969 was a long time ago; right now it feels like yesterday. Altering her usual routine, G'ma promised that she would meet the mailman at 11 and drive the envelopes over to the high school so that I could open them right away.  It was a compromise, but one I could tolerate.  G'ma didn't believe in mental health days - if you were breathing, you went to class.

The clock couldn't have ticked more slowly.  The bell could not have rung more loudly.  It was the end of 4th period, and I ran to the door by the gym and there, in the car, sat my future.  I stopped in my tracks and took a moment. It may have been the first time in my life that I stood still and noticed where I was and what I was doing.  I knew that my life was about to change.  My future was in the front seat.

The Penn envelope was slim.  It doesn't take many words to crush a teenager's dream.  They didn't want me.  No explanation, beyond the facts that a lot of smart kids had the same idea that I had and, unfortunately, the school could not accommodate all of us.  There was a dark, rushing sound in my ears. 

The fat envelope from Cornell helped assuage the pain.... a little.  I'd spent the summer after my Junior year in Ithaca, taking economics and falling in love with the campus.  I knew I'd be happy there (and I was) but it wasn't what I wanted.  I'd let myself down.

G'ma was there, as always, with tissues and a comforting pat.  But that was all.  There was no wallowing, no time for self-pity, no reason to mourn.  The Ivy League still wanted me, even if it meant spending time in the verdant hills of upstate New York instead of the gritty streets of downtown Philly. I could get an education, and, with the help of the State of New York and its Regents' Scholarship Program, the cost would be minimal.  I should be happy that I had a good alternative and I should wipe my tears and get back to class.

That's G'ma...... accept it and move on because what else can you do.  It feels as harsh to type it as it did to go through it but it was also the right thing to do.  The halls were filled with seniors with smiles and seniors with distraught oh my God what will I do faces and I don't know how (or why) our teachers taught us anything that afternoon.  We were focused forward; the here and now had suddenly become the past.

And now, 40+ years later, I have received Cornell's list of accepted students from Southern Arizona.  I and my volunteer colleagues have contacted and reported on dozens of applicants.  Four of them have been offered the chance to become Cornellians... one of them with a prestigious University sponsored scholarship/leadership award.  For the others, the talented, athletic, brilliant others, their dreams are quashed. 

We aren't allowed to ask where else they've applied, so I have no idea if they were smart to stretch to Ithaca while having plenty of safer back-ups ready just in case.  I don't know if they'll be as resilient as Little Cuter was when, denied rolling admission to her first choice school, she tossed the envelope aside and said "C'mon, Mom.  If they don't want me I don't want them.  Let's go apply to colleges."

The walk down the hall to her computer seemed longer to me than it did to her.  She was energized, ready to take action, turning lemons into lemonade.  I had a broken heart - my baby wouldn't be riding a pink moped through the streets of Madison, Wisconsin and there was nothing to be done to fix it.  Nothing to be done by me, that is.  She fixed the problem handily, applying and being accepted to all those schools whose applications she completed that awful (to me) week. 

Rejection wasn't the end of the world for either of us, it seems.  It just felt like it, at the time, to me.

Farm Teams

Bull Durham (20th Anniversary Edition)(Sorry, regular readers. Further notes on newspapers - which was promised on Friday - will have to await another post.)
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Professional baseball has farm teams. Promising players can be drafted out of high school and sent to the minor leagues to hone their talents and become the emotionally mature adults that living away from home on $23/day while surrounded by tobacco chewing and spitting equally mature young adults will make them. More academically inclined (and, perhaps, less physically talented) high school seniors would go on to Arizona or USC or Stanford or LSU or Texas and graduate before being drafted and sent to the minor leagues where they could continue to hone their talents while being the emotionally mature adults that spending 4 years on a college campus as a pampered National Champion had made them.

(If I've gotten this far without your wondering where the Bull Durham link is lurking, then you're probably not going to be a regular reader......... are you?)

Professional basketball used to have the NCAA, until boys decided that they were ready to play with men and kids started going from high school straight to the pros. Some did better than others, and one is named LeBron, but listening to Patrick Ewing say that Dwight Howard had "to use his head in the second half" made me wonder why a professional had to be reminded to think. Maybe college would've taught him that particular skill.

High schoolers are now going to Europe to play professional ball. Being "1-and-done" - as perfected by Carmelo Anthony who led Syracuse to the NCAA Championship and then left after his freshman year - is no longer an anomaly. Although I've finally stopped feeling deserted by professionals jumping from team to team and have recognized the fact that I am, in fact, cheering for laundry, I liked watching college kids and teams grow together over several seasons. I liked watching the kids mature over 4 years, and I'm sorry that things have changed.

And I'm also sorry that our colleges and universities are being used as farm teams by the NBA. The revenues are huge and hugely out of proportion - and don't tell me that these wildly successful basketball programs are self-funding and that spill off from their revenue helps to fund other campus athletic priorities. When Jim Calhoun is the highest paid public employee in the state of Connecticut I don't care how many epees the UConn fencing team can buy with basketball excess. There's something seriously awry.

This has been a recurring theme for me, hasn't it. I'm not complaining - I'm trying not to become a crotchety old woman who knows that everything was better back in the day. In fact, I have a solution to propose. I know that some scholar/athletes are truly in school (Stanford basketball players are always studying for some exam or other on ESPN) but for most players in elite programs, academics must be a secondary concern. Travel schedules alone make it extraordinarily difficult for all but the most dedicated to graduate with their class, and the allure of an NBA salary or the exhaustion of their scholarship funds sends most others away from academia. Why not end the hypocrisy? Let coaches recruit high school kids who want to play on their teams. Let them have access to the classroom, but not require it of them. Don't call it a scholarship; call it a fellowship. For that's really what the athlete on campus is doing - he's creating a sense of community, a well-spring of fellow-feeling that is a big part of any campus that can create a big time sports program.

It's nice when those BMOC's can grow into the role over time. It's good for the student body, it's good for the school's tradition, and it's good for the kids themselves. Too bad........




"I just hope I can help the team......"

Why ?

Can someone explain to me why the SAT is advertising on Facebook?

I'm really confused. Going to college - you know about the test. Live in a family that pays half an ounce of attention to the world around it - you know about the test. Attend high school - you know about the test. Have older siblings - you know about the test. You really don't need to be reminded.

"The one, the only - the SAT". As if it were a fancy car - the Ferrari of tests - something to which everyone would aspire. It's cool. It's hip. It's your friend - "There are scarier things than the SAT - like having your Mom chaperone the prom" . And it's physically attractive. At least the ad is.

So, I'm 15 and I'm hooked. Forget the ACT. I'll sign up. I promise.

Is ETS using high school kids to pressure colleges to retain the test as an admissions tool? After all, if you've paid to take the thing, and studied for it, and stayed up nights worrying about it, you're going to send your scores whether the school demands them or not. And if they show up in the Admissions Office you know they'll be looked at, and that's a hard bell to un-ring.

Standardizing anything is difficult, and trying to quantify the thinking of high school students is impossible by definition. Test taking skills, access to tutoring, having the flu on test day - there are lots of reasons you're smarter than your score. Or dumber, for that matter. But as one piece of the complex puzzle that is a college applicant, it has its place.

I just don't know why they're advertising.