Ivy Schools

I have yet to see a show or movie about what life is like in an Ivy League school. There are plenty about what it takes to get in there. The underprivileged inner-city student that manages to overcome the odds and get into Harvard. The uniformed boarding school kid learning some incredibly valuable life lesson, writing an essay about it, deemed worthy of admittance into the elite. But I have yet to come across anything, anything at all that talks about life once you get in.

What is it like to go from the top of your class to the bottom, or middle? What is it like to have people who would otherwise never look at you twice randomly offer you a job? What is it like to have people tell stories about you? To be one of the connections that people brag about? I am used to being invisible; this is so disorienting.

I wish that I could be like Will Hunting before he was “discovered”. Just live life. Study at a library. Be yourself without any responsibilities to anyone else. Once you reveal what you are capable of, people start expecting it of you. Then again, if nobody expects it of you, you have fewer opportunities to explore with it. Well, I certainly will not have any problems with that.

I think that maybe people do not like to listen to something that they do not understand. A lot of times, they do not even like having it around. Why do people get so emotional when someone is speaking in a language that they do not understand? Is it really national pride, or is it because they like to know what is going on all the time? Is it bad to want to know what is going on all the time? That is considered one of the nobler pursuits of science and history and journalism and philosophy… maybe it is only bad if it involves stamping out what you do not know instead of trying to understand it. Nobody has tried to stamp out institutions like Harvard, except the communists.

I guess that my dilemma is simply that I do not know what I have gotten myself into. I have no idea what the next your years of my life will be. I am not sure that I am going to be prepared for change that is beyond my control, beyond my understanding, to have consequences that I cannot predict. Can I predict them? Well, I will certainly do my best.

Trepidations about the Future

Alright, I know that I have not posted in a while and the single person who knows that this blog exists has probably lost interest a long time ago. However, I am not one to be easily discouraged, and am posting again anyway.

I got into a very nice University. It is not Yale, I got rejected, but I probably would have chosen this college over Yale anyway. (It is a much better fit for my personality) I do not particularly want to tell the entire internet what university this happens to be, because that information compounded with some of the other info that I let slip in this blog might make my true identity too searchable for comfort. (Not that you might not be able to guess what it is) No, you reader(s) only get to know my true identity when I come streaming out of the telephone booth to save the world. Anyway, I will say that it is a very selective technical college. I will call it TIEC for Technical Institute of the East Coast. I thought this acronym would have a bit more decorum than ECT, not that I have ever been especially concerned with decorum.

Anyway, TIEC recently invited all of its admitted students to a class-wide campus visit, with lots of events planned and lots of free food. I went. And it was great. I could be as open as I felt about my academics, and people just accepted it as a matter of course. There was no double take, no long blink, no awkward silence whenever I revealed something particularly geeky. I was just a slight variation on everyone else there. Emphasis on the word slight. I am used to being strange beyond measure. I would not be surprised if I actually had some sort of mental illness, but I have never been to a psychologist. I am kind of used to the looks people give me when they realize that I am smart, used to having people refuse to argue with me or compete with me in any kind of game. But there… I was normal, at least in my degree of intelligence.

I am not going to lie, there were some less exciting aspects of realizing that I was normal. For one thing, I will probably not be at the top of my class. I am not sure; I am only judging from a single weekend. (I know how arrogant this is, but it is still hard to believe that it is possible that I will not be at the top.) I give myself a 10% chance of being in the top ten percent. This is much less likely than the chances that I am used to, even with my probable overestimation (never forget my own arrogance).

Then again, I am fairly sure that I will be better at a lot of things physically. One of the events there was sword fighting like they do in video games, but in real life. (I told you these place is amazing) Anyway, I won. By a lot. We were not really keeping score, and I can still tell you that I won. There was another booth for a martial arts club, and they had some people ready to teach some kicks as a demonstration in order to convince people to join. (Note how they taught it instead of showed it. Again, this place is AMAZING!) Anyway, they did the eyebrow thing that people do when they are impressed and asked me to sign up. (they would have asked anyway, that was the point of the demonstration- to convince people to sign up) I did. I was planning on learning some martial arts in college anyway. Later, I went to a salsa party at one of the frat houses, where they taught salsa to all the people there. Again, I did well. (Oh and that frat party was amazing. There was actually some mention of physics. Where else is there a discussion of physics at a frat party? Again I say, this place is AmAzInG!) Anyway, it is comforting that, even if I will not be the top of my class academically, I will be near the top physically.

One thing that really scares me though, is that everyone there is really, really smart, or else they would not be able to get in, and this particular university is not known for its strict adherence to rules and regulations. This is exciting in more than one way. First let me clarify that TIEC does make an effort to track down violations that harm people or property, just not the silly little pranks and jokes, so it is not as if there is a lot of serious stuff going on here. It is however, endlessly amusing because those pranks can be really funny. For this reason, I want to join this community of hackers. No worries, I will only be doing fun stuff, jokes. Nothing harmful. Anyway, it also means that my level of security is going to go up, a lot further than it is now, just because people do not worship rules there. (Of course, that my security is going up is not saying much. Right now, I only lock my car if I am in a city, and only sometimes then.)

Yet another things that impressed me from that weekend was the incredible amount of diversity. Alright, I know that I am coming from the Midwest, a place not exactly known for its diversity, but I was incredibly impressed with the amount of cultures at TIEC. I thought that I was reaching out because I have friends who are not in the same denomination as me, a couple who aren’t even Christian. *gasp* But at TIEC, the fact that I was a Christian was actually something to be noted as strange. People were going by the Campus Christians as if they had a strange religion. There were Atheists, Jews, Muslums, Hindus… Don’t get me wrong, I have known people who are not Christian, I am not completely isolated, but I have never felt like I was in the minority before. I am not even sure that I was, it might have just felt like it because it was a lot less than the 90% majority that I am used to. Maybe it was just because I am used to people knowing that I am a Christian… ( I have a reputation at school)

That brings up another thing. At this completely new place, I will be able to shape a reputation relatively unaffected by my reputation at home. If I want to be the athletic hacker, I can, and very few people will be comparing that with the image I have here of a near perfect angel. Except that I am not sure that I want that image. I might have left my church, but I left on moral grounds, not the lack thereof, so I am certainly not going to go out reckless. What kind of a person do I want to project myself as? I am going to have to make that decision before I get on campus, because first impressions are hard to change. Well, that is the question for a different blog. I have homework to get done.

The Real Game Starts

I think that one of the things about growing up is realizing that there is a world beyond my own.

When I was small, everything that I did was for the here and now. If I played for a prize, it was some candy that I was going to get in a couple of minutes. Otherwise, it was for the fun of playing... and everything was a game. I do not just mean the tag and Nintendo, but the schoolwork and lessons. Even in high school, I did not take classes that I did not like. Alright, I did strategize in order to make the best college application that I could, but I only did that because it was like a really big game. It was either strategize for that or take them randomly. I have always been a fan of order, so I planned, not because I was particularly ambitious, but because it was fun.

Then that fun changed. At the end of my junior year, I started applying to college, and figuring out where I could apply with realistic chances and… well… life turned serious. My game of high school turned out to have real consequences. I was looking at test scores on collegeboard.com’s college profiles, trying to find a reach school, and well, I could not. Even at Yale, my scores were at the upper end of their range. Suddenly, my game turned out to be real.

This completely rocked my boat. I had brushed off the private school as something that I could do, therefore it was no big deal. Then I realize that I can do the Ivy Leagues too. If nothing else, their fame forced me to see that I was not playing a game. I always thought that my friends were joking when they said that they wanted to go to Harvard or Stanford. Then I find out that they actually have a chance, a realistic expectation to go there. My world is turned upside down! Things that I thought were just fanciful dreams, hopeless ambitions, they are real.

When I was small, I found out the Santa Clause was my mother, Camelot never existed, and light-speed travel has yet to be invented. I also made the conclusion that New York City did not exist. It followed the trend. When people think nobility, they think Camelot, but there are no historical artifacts from that mystical city. When people think of the new world and technology, they think space travel, but the moon is the furthest a human has gone. Whenever someone thought of a city, they thought “New York”, but I did not personally know anyone who had been there. When I found out that it did, in fact, exist, I pushed it to the back of my mind as “well, nobody goes there”.

Then came that fateful junior year.

BOOM! (that was my world exploding.) Suddenly, I find out that the coasts are real possibilities. Many of my friends fully intend to leave and never come back. This is even more of a shock, to find out that I was expected to continue the Midwest brain-drain. First I find out the rest of the world exists, then I find out that I am supposed to go there? Somewhere people do not know how to play Euchre? Where the ocean is a weekend destination? Where crime is rampant and people are rude? Where it is possible to survive without a driver’s license? Where you have to pay for everything, but can buy anything? I am not sure that I will be able to survive in such a foreign world.

However, I am now nearing the end of my senior year, and am getting used to the prospect of the rest of the world, even enamored. If I were able to get into Yale, actually attend there, what else might I be able to do? Now, I listen to the radio on the way to school, not thinking about those silly people on the coast, but thinking, “that could be me.” I look at an atlas, and see all the roads and cities and population and think that there are actually people living there. It is not just a political force or a vacation destination, but a home and way of life. I have always known these facts, but have only recently come to realize their implications. I know that this is my youth speaking, but I feel like I can go out and do anything. The rest of the world is just as real the climbing tree in my yard.