Red Letter Day

As it turns out, college interviews aren’t as distressing as they are daunting. True, I tripped timidly over my tongue through most of my Yale interview (a formal affair conducted in a bank), but it could have gone far worse. And the interview I was lucky enough to secure for Dartmouth College a few weeks later was positively enjoyable (held by an elderly couple in their beautiful home and complete with chamomile tea).

AHHHHHH!

Interviews only whet my collegiate appetite, however. Like millions of expectant students before me, I checked my mailbox religiously. As it were, my second, and most exciting reply (FSU’s acceptance was the first) came in the wonderfully weighty, scarlet envelope from Arcadia University (my first choice after the Ivy Leaguers). After partaking in a wild celebratory jig, my parents and I began to plan a visit to the Glenside castle that I had already secretly set my heart on. The perfect opportunity arose with the FYSAE and honors reception in March.

Over Spring Break, when the rest of my friends were digging themselves lazily into the sands of Florida’s beaches, I packed my warmest winter clothes and boarded a plane to Philly with my mother, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Philadelphia was delightful. As a person who regularly seeks out culture-shock, I was thrilled with its cold moody skies, framed by barren trees, edgy, historic streets, skirted by impressive architecture, and efficient buses and trains, filled with friendly strangers.

 

We traveled by bus to Arcadia the day after we arrived, and, swaddled in our dusty coats, approached the magnificent school. After an interesting tour given by Faith Bogue (she was really great!) and the truly welcoming (not to mention, delicious) FYSAE/ Honors reception, I hardly even cared that the Ivies would be sending out their decisions the following evening (decisions that despite the aforementioned “good-fortune dancing,” were not in my favor). I found a place that I was looking forward to calling home.

Nine? Nein!

Nine has always been my favorite number. And, sure, I’m as superstitious as the next slightly obsessive-compulsive, lucky-underpants-wearing, wood-knocker with her own quirky brand of good-fortune dancing, but that isn’t why I chose to apply to nine colleges. Applying to nine schools gave me flexibility, options, an arrant aversion to the Common Application website, and this prolix chronicle of my search for higher education.

Most of my applications I finished fairly quickly, or at least well before they were due. My standard essay about Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet was, if a little cliché and pontifical, something I was proud of. Submit buttons were clicked and electronic signatures tapped out across the bottom of web pages for Florida State University, Flagler College, UNC Chapel Hill, Macalester College, American University, Arcadia University, and even Dartmouth College and Brown University, daunting and involved as the latter two were. However, I still had one application to go.

Now, we all love a bit of procrastination here and there, myself included. Accomplishing often-grandiose tasks just in the nick of time is nothing short of thrilling, and something I considered myself quite adept at. But ah, how the mighty fall, plummet, and sink until they are sitting in front of their computers at 10 minutes until midnight on New Year’s Eve, fingers flying furiously across keys to finish, within deadline, the undergraduate application to Yale University.

This is a pretty accurate depiction.

In hindsight, I realize how much I built up applying to Yale. It loomed, formidable, on my to-do list, rising on the fortifications of fear, prestige, desire to get in, and what schools call “legacy.” My paternal grandfather studied at Yale, class of 1946.  A truly wonderful man, I credit him with instilling in me fervor for learning. To follow in his footsteps would have been a dream come true. But as fireworks burst out across the night sky, ringing in 2011, and I sat hastily typing my 16-letters-long name into the Common App’s electronic signature (Why, oh, why couldn’t I be called “Pat Smith?”) I doubted seriously if continuing that legacy would ever be possible. The worry nagged harrowingly on my conscience until just around six days later, when I got a phone call from a New Haven alumna inviting me to interview for a place at Yale.

"Change always comes bearing gifts." -- Price Pritchett

I finally emptied my London Fund a few  days ago!

On Independence Day 2010, instead of revelling in the midsummer mood of the freedom of our nation as well as my own from the classroom, my mind was abuzz with, well, school and fleeing the country. I was about to begin my senior year of high school (that year where all 17-year-old sanities go to die) and was becoming increasingly worried that the dream I had been cultivating for ages of going to university in England was not going come to fruition after all. Tuition after the currency exchange rate was outrageous, the distance from home vast, and the sheer shock of self-sufficiency in a foreign nation (even though I would stubbornly refuse to admit it at the time), probably too severe to handle on my own. But I was dogged in my search to find a way.

King's College was my dream school

Now, I'm not one for fatalism, but by some happy occurrence, these gloomy frustrations were poking particularly petulantly at me while I was at my family's annual Fourth of July reunion in Pleasanton, Kansas. That day, lured by the bouquet of burning barbecue, I approached a picnic table surrounded by chatty groups of people. The words "study abroad" and "Cork, Ireland" snatched my attention at once. They came from one Kat Gleeson, the 26-year-old daughter of a family friend and I had no idea how they would utterly change my life.

Kansas family cabin, viewed from the fateful picnic table

About an hour and a half after I had eagerly ingratiated myself into Kat's conversation, I was with left effervescent hope and a start: a torn piece of paper, flecked with barbecue sauce and crammed with information, most notably the words "Arcadia University" circled emphatically in blue ink.