Early Decision (18 page)

Anne didn't bother to object a second time.

“So do all the dads take you to lunch?” Martin pressed.

“Not usually.”

“He's not to be trusted.”

“No shit.”

“I'm not talking about essays, Anne.”

Anne felt a thrill run across her shoulders. Not the reality, but the risk; the thought that she might be the uncertain one, for once, the one who might not be where she said she'd be.

“He's married,” she explained. “To a very powerful woman. That's not a concern.”

“Bullshit,” said Martin, giving her an incredulous smile. “And have you seen that woman? She'll probably hit on you, too.”

“Don't be ridiculous. They have children.”

“Grow up, Annie,” he huffed, sounding annoyed. Jealousy did not please him the way it sometimes intrigued her. He had no patience with sharing. “The man's a creep and you should not be accepting free spaghetti from him. Don't do it again.”

He reached for her hand as he said this, clamped it tightly in his fist, and propelled them forward.

“I won't,” she said.

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Dear Anne,

Here's my common application essay for Harvard (so far). I've written three versions of it, and I'm going to send them through to you later unless you tell me not to (Mom says you may not want to read all three?). This is the best one, I think, but it's all over the place and Dad isn't sure of the point of it. Anyway, let me know what you think. Questions:

*  Is it okay if Mom is just “homemaker” on the common application part about parents' occupations? Or should she put down that she works too? She's always doing stuff but it's not really paid?

*  Do I have to submit the supplemental essays at the exact same time as the common app? If so, how do I do that? Do we use two computers? Or do I do one and then the other? Which one first?

*  Is it okay if the credit card I use to pay the application fee is my dad's and not mine? I don't have one.

*  I don't want to wait until Hallowe'en to send it in, but I'm worried if I send it too soon they'll think I didn't work hard enough on it. What do you think? Should I wait extra days just so they know I was really careful?

*  Is it okay if I ask my teacher recommenders to address the envelopes themselves, or should I address them for them? Handwriting or typed?

*  I have taken several AP tests. Is it okay just to put down all the 5s I got on the common app or do they need me to send them some sort of proof of this?

*  Is it lame to title my essay?

Thanks! Hope to hear from you soon!

ALEXIS GRANT'S THUMB

One afternoon soon after I began tutoring Somali refugees at a local non-profit, I brought a map of the world so that we could all study together the country my students came from. After all, I've never been to Africa (though I very much want to go!) and I had to admit I had no idea where literally in the world these kids had been born and raised. I commented on the shape of their huge nation and how some of the boundaries are as straight as rulers while others are bumpy and jut out, and a counselor made a joke about “Churchill's thumb,” which the kids smiled at, so I knew it wasn't the first time they'd heard it. Apparently it is said as a legend that when the English partitioned Africa after WWII they tried to take into account rivers, lakes, deserts, natural tribal patterns and other issues but some of the drawing was so arbitrary that one imagines the men leaning over the big map and just tracing around their fingers—leading to the protrusions, and the joke about Churchill's thumb. I don't see anything obviously hand-like on today's map of Africa, but it doesn't take the presence of dozens of Somali refugees in my town in Minnesota to tell us that the process of partition and the movement away from colonialization has hardly been a successful one.

Twice a week, when I bike home from my tutoring sessions, I think about these kids and what it would be like if the tables were turned. What if I were the one who had been transported to an entirely new place, where it was hot all the time when I was used to snow, where I didn't speak the language and had no job or school to go to, where my belly always hurt because I had to eat things I'd never seen before? Add to that the consideration that my family most likely had fled a war or worse, and it makes me wonder, riding down the streets that I know so well, what virtue there is in notions of nationality or, for that matter, statehood in general. It seems to me that boundaries are drawn by those in power, and rarely in the consideration of those not in power. Does it matter to someone in my town where the state line of Minnesota is? Well, no, not to me—I could bike over it and not notice that the sidewalk suddenly belonged to Wisconsin (or to Canada, for that matter), but I understand that governmental bodies require an understanding of their domain—the limits—so they know what is theirs to take and what is theirs to take care of. In school I've had the chance to study various forms of government and community-building, ranging from Native American tribes here to the trials of the US Civil War and the fight to avoid secession of the Southern states. On the one hand, when I think of the Native Americans and how the process of expulsion and confinement to reservations decimated that great people, I am full of sorrow to think that the requirements of a collective state are, paradoxically, the privatization of everything. If land belongs to everyone, to all our children and their children and so on, then is there really any need to declare, This is mine and This is yours? If we can barter successfully to acquire the things we need to survive, do we need a central government to support a currency and a marketplace? On the other hand, I read of the intention of the Southern states to build their own nation based on slave labor, and I realize that it has been critically important in history that the government of the Northern states refused to tolerate this move and were willing to send thousands to die to protect their vision of a better nation.

As in all political issues, I am learning, there is the dream and there is the reality. The dream of an independent Africa exists but the reality is in part the little kids I'm teaching to read on Tuesdays and Thursdays, who are freezing their tails off in Minnesota in search of a better life. These are big ideas, I realize, and I am idealistic to think about tackling them. But it is my highest hope for the next several years of my education to learn more about the requirements of the successful modern state and the challenges posed to the development of young states around the world. If there is a way for people to live mostly in peace by virtue of drawing and maintaining boundaries, may we learn to create boundaries where they naturally fall, rather than imposing our own images like shadows across the earth. I believe in the goal of our common humanity, and I hope one day to work to ensure the success of all nations by understanding more fully the ways people must draw lines in order to be more free.

 

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

“You must be joking,” I told my parents. “There is no way.”

I think I laughed out loud when my mother told me I was going to spend one month of my summer on a field trip investigating the “American West By Page and Range” with the English teachers from my school. It was just one of her latest ideas for my college application, I thought, and there was no way I was going to forfit my summer for that.

“I am not joking” mom told me “you are already signed up.”

So in July there I was, at Ohare airport, waiting to board a flight to Bozeman. Which I thought sounded like a good dogs name but not a place I wanted to spend my summer. Little did I know what I would find there. Did you ever lay back and see so many stars overhead that they blurred together like snow? Well, I have. And it was amazing to think that I spent every night of my life until that day in Montana looking up and not knowing what was really there. Light from the nearby city of Chicago makes it impossible to see the stars, except for the Big Dipper and a few others, and mostly the sky is sort of pink. I had no idea what the sky was supposed to look like. You can't even see the constellations where I live.

Did you ever stand in a braided river? Or watch a moose try to get a piece of sawgrass off it's antler? Or a beaver go back and forth making it's damn? Or spot mountain lion tracks and wonder how far away it was? Well, I have. These are the things I did during the day, when at night we had the incredible stars, in Montana, in the Bitterroot Range. But the coolest thing about my school trip to Montana are the wild horses, or mustangs. They were completely wild. They had never had to take the bit (that metal part that horses have stuffed in their mouths all day) and when we went horseback riding along the trails and saw them in the fields way out, it's like the horse I was on was jealous, and I wanted to get down and take all the tack off of him and just let him free. I guess I think it's like seeing the stars in Montana. You don't know about how it's supposed to be until you get out of your own prison, and my prison is Winnetka, Illinois, and like the horse I wished I could run free.

I know it sounds spoiled to call Winnetka a prison but I realized this summer that so much of the time when I react with anger to what my parents tell me to do or sign me up for its because I am at a time in my life when I am starting to find so many things I want to study and do. I loved the mustangs because they represented for me a way of living that was about my own independence and my own interests. I had no idea that I would love the mountains so much, or as I said what the sky looks like at night when you aren't blinded by the city. And I guess growing up is a little bit like that. Your parents shine so brightly that you don't really know what's out there until you get away from it all by yourself. We need parents, like cities, to keep us safe and give us the things we need to survive. But we also need open fields and dark night skies so we can discover the things in our own hearts.

I've spent my time in high school working on things that I liked and that were important to my parents and teachers, like tennis, guitar, peer leader and homework. I feel very lucky to have been able to do all these things. But I was surprised to learn this summer that I feel passionate about things that are completely new to me, like caring for the wilderness or finding ways to be sure that wild horses are protected in our nation's west. It has made me eager to get back to school and history and science classes, and I've signed up for US Government so I can learn about the laws that govern our land. When my parents ask me about these changes, I sometimes find I don't want to share with them everything that I've discovered, not because it will prove they were right about the trip this summer but because it's important to keep our own interests to ourselves sometimes, when they are brand new. But when I think about college, it is with a new sense of excitement for all the things I will discover there. College, like Montana, will show me things I never knew were there, and give me the chance to find new directions for my passions. I believe that ____ will be the best place for me to explore my new interests.

 

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Anne

Please find attached Cristina's personal statement, which I've typed up for her as she has no computer and the school's lab has been closed since the TA is out this week. Can you send on to Blanchard, please?

Thx

Michelle

“No, Mami,” I said. “It's the supreme law of the land.”

“The high law?” asked my mother.

“Supreme law of the land,” I repeated.

We had been working on this question, “What is the Constitution?”, along with 100 others to prepare for the United States Citizenship Test. It was all we had talked about in my house for many weeks. My mother knows what the Constitution is, but we've been told that it is important that she give exactly the answer the testers want and not try to explain herself. It was late and Mom was tired. She had been working all day. My sisters offered to clean up dinner so I could keep quizzing Mom. She had only three days to prepare.

The preparation made me think about tests. This test, for example, was one that I would never have to take, being born in the United States. The answers were not things that any of my classmates would know. And truly, I wondered if my teachers could answer all of them, or that policeman by the front doors, or the principal, even. I was tempted to go up to them and ask: What are the stripes on the flag for? What about the stars? What is the First Amendment? But I know that these aren't the things that actually make citizens. It seems unfair to me that my mami should have to take this test while my sisters and I don't even have to learn these things, not even in school, to pass. It's enough just to be here.

But there are other tests, we all face them. For me, it's every test and quiz in school that my teachers prepare. If I want to go to college, I have to perform excellently on every single one of them. No exceptions. But the harder tests are out of school, I know, and they are harder to explain. There is the test of a very long day: can you get three little sisters up, dressed, and ready for school, feed them breakfast, and then do well on your own schoolwork? Can you also pick them up and make them dinner and make sure they are healthy and ready for bed before you start your homework? There is the test of doing this day after day, and coming home and finding out that it's still not enough, because maybe Mami has had to take a week off because her back is out again, and then there is not much money for that week. So this new test is: Can you figure out how to cook meals without any new ingredients from the store? We would do very well on the Citizenship test if one question was: You have beans, rice, water, salt, and cheese. Make three dishes for five people!