[original: nonfiction] Life Choices
Jul. 16th, 2013 09:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perfectworrytitle: Life Choices
genre: nonfiction
community:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol
prompt: Exhibit B: Week 8: when I was young
word count: 973
rating: G
summary: Once upon a time, I applied to college.
"When I grow up, I want to be a purple tree."
This is what I decided, driving with my mom on the way home from a college fair a few towns over. Gazing out the passenger's side window at a row of red maples, I had my feet on the dashboard and my sweatshirt sleeves pulled up over my hands with holes cut out for my thumbs. I guess my mother must have felt bad for me, because she didn't grump at me about it like she usually would.
"What do you need to major in to do that?" she asked instead.
I slumped further down in my seat, but I laughed. Lately, it seemed like I spent all of my time thinking about the future. What should I major in? Where should I go? I had narrowed down my list to "not in Vermont," but that left a whole big wide world outside the borders of the Green Mountain State.
*
Since I went to a vocational high school, every day I had class with thirty boys and three girls. I had always been "one of the boys," but when the coolest college girl I ever met suggested I go to a women's college during another one of those fairs, I knew immediately that was where I needed to go.
With those criteria in mind, I started Googling. I could have just asked the high school counselor, but we had an unspoken agreement to spend as little time as possible in each other's company so I could just graduate already and we'd never have to speak to each other again, so I did it my damn self. I typed in "women's college -vermont."
That still left me a lot, so I centered my search around Smith, because I had heard of that one. My mom, long-suffering soul though she is, drove me down to Massachusetts for the long weekend on October. We started at Mt. Holyoke, my second choice, as a warm-up.
*
"Why do you want to go to college?" asked my interviewer, a perky brunette with a sprightly light magenta blouse.
"Uhm," I said, and then I spouted some bullshit I don't remember and changed the subject to the exponential increase in my GPA between grades ten and eleven. (It's amazing what anti-depressants can do for you if you need them.)
*
"So," asked my mom in the car on the way to Simmons, after I bombed the same question at Smith. "Why do you want to go to college?"
"Because you'll disown me if I don't," I suggested, mostly joking.
"I won't disown you," said my mother. She laughed. "I'll just make you pay rent."
"I don't know," I said. Somehow, "because that's just what you do" didn't seem like the answer my interviewers, or my mother, were looking for, but it was the truth - part of it, anyway.
"So why not just spend another year at tech and get a job as a graphic designer?" prompted my mom. "It would be cheaper."
"I'd be stuck in Vermont," I pointed out. I spent the last two years of my high schooling at Essex Tech, the local vocational school, studying computer animation, web and graphic design. I could pay for another year, finish my training in graphic design, and go try to find a job. That was the whole point of vocational school. But if I did that, I'd be proving everyone right: I wouldn't ever get anywhere.
"So get a job in Boston."
"Nobody will hire me without a bachelor's degree." This had been pounded into our heads for the last six months of school. Technical training wasn't enough. You needed to have those two little letters, B and A, if you wanted to ever get gainful employment. Also not a very inspirational answer for my interviewers.
"You could always flip burgers," said my mom, "If you don't want to do that, then you'll have to come up with a good answer."
"I like to know things," I said. It felt like climbing up a ladder in the dark, and I finally found the rung above me. "I want to learn."
"You love to learn," agreed my mom. "You belong in a university."
My mom pulled into the visitor's parking. I smoothed my buzz cut. I already looked like I belonged here. Now I just had to go convince my interviewer.
*
"I love to learn," I chirped, when she asked me. "I want to expand my horizons," I continued, borrowing my mom's phrase. I knew as soon as I stepped foot on campus that this is the school I wanted to attend, and all of that passion found it's way into my interview.
"I think you'll be a good fit," said the interview girl at the end of my half-hour session. "Based on your interview and academic records, I invite you to apply for the honors program."
I took a pamphlet.
*
I regretted taking the pamphlet, another three essays on top of the Common Application and the extenuating circumstances essay I had to write about why they should let me in even though I got a D- in physics and actually flunked right out of biology.
"Why do I want to get into the honors program?" I asked my mom, sitting at our kitchen table.
"I don't know," she said, turning it back to me. "Why do you want to get into the honors program?"
"They give me $700 a year for textbooks," I said, but if there's anything high school had taught me, it was that sometimes, honesty was not the best policy.
"Well," said my mother, "that, and…"
"I love to learn," I repeated glumly. My mom laughed. I thumped my head on the table. "I changed my mind. When grow up, I want to be a purple tree."
genre: nonfiction
community:
therealljidol prompt: Exhibit B: Week 8: when I was young
word count: 973
rating: G
summary: Once upon a time, I applied to college.
"When I grow up, I want to be a purple tree."
This is what I decided, driving with my mom on the way home from a college fair a few towns over. Gazing out the passenger's side window at a row of red maples, I had my feet on the dashboard and my sweatshirt sleeves pulled up over my hands with holes cut out for my thumbs. I guess my mother must have felt bad for me, because she didn't grump at me about it like she usually would.
"What do you need to major in to do that?" she asked instead.
I slumped further down in my seat, but I laughed. Lately, it seemed like I spent all of my time thinking about the future. What should I major in? Where should I go? I had narrowed down my list to "not in Vermont," but that left a whole big wide world outside the borders of the Green Mountain State.
*
Since I went to a vocational high school, every day I had class with thirty boys and three girls. I had always been "one of the boys," but when the coolest college girl I ever met suggested I go to a women's college during another one of those fairs, I knew immediately that was where I needed to go.
With those criteria in mind, I started Googling. I could have just asked the high school counselor, but we had an unspoken agreement to spend as little time as possible in each other's company so I could just graduate already and we'd never have to speak to each other again, so I did it my damn self. I typed in "women's college -vermont."
That still left me a lot, so I centered my search around Smith, because I had heard of that one. My mom, long-suffering soul though she is, drove me down to Massachusetts for the long weekend on October. We started at Mt. Holyoke, my second choice, as a warm-up.
*
"Why do you want to go to college?" asked my interviewer, a perky brunette with a sprightly light magenta blouse.
"Uhm," I said, and then I spouted some bullshit I don't remember and changed the subject to the exponential increase in my GPA between grades ten and eleven. (It's amazing what anti-depressants can do for you if you need them.)
*
"So," asked my mom in the car on the way to Simmons, after I bombed the same question at Smith. "Why do you want to go to college?"
"Because you'll disown me if I don't," I suggested, mostly joking.
"I won't disown you," said my mother. She laughed. "I'll just make you pay rent."
"I don't know," I said. Somehow, "because that's just what you do" didn't seem like the answer my interviewers, or my mother, were looking for, but it was the truth - part of it, anyway.
"So why not just spend another year at tech and get a job as a graphic designer?" prompted my mom. "It would be cheaper."
"I'd be stuck in Vermont," I pointed out. I spent the last two years of my high schooling at Essex Tech, the local vocational school, studying computer animation, web and graphic design. I could pay for another year, finish my training in graphic design, and go try to find a job. That was the whole point of vocational school. But if I did that, I'd be proving everyone right: I wouldn't ever get anywhere.
"So get a job in Boston."
"Nobody will hire me without a bachelor's degree." This had been pounded into our heads for the last six months of school. Technical training wasn't enough. You needed to have those two little letters, B and A, if you wanted to ever get gainful employment. Also not a very inspirational answer for my interviewers.
"You could always flip burgers," said my mom, "If you don't want to do that, then you'll have to come up with a good answer."
"I like to know things," I said. It felt like climbing up a ladder in the dark, and I finally found the rung above me. "I want to learn."
"You love to learn," agreed my mom. "You belong in a university."
My mom pulled into the visitor's parking. I smoothed my buzz cut. I already looked like I belonged here. Now I just had to go convince my interviewer.
*
"I love to learn," I chirped, when she asked me. "I want to expand my horizons," I continued, borrowing my mom's phrase. I knew as soon as I stepped foot on campus that this is the school I wanted to attend, and all of that passion found it's way into my interview.
"I think you'll be a good fit," said the interview girl at the end of my half-hour session. "Based on your interview and academic records, I invite you to apply for the honors program."
I took a pamphlet.
*
I regretted taking the pamphlet, another three essays on top of the Common Application and the extenuating circumstances essay I had to write about why they should let me in even though I got a D- in physics and actually flunked right out of biology.
"Why do I want to get into the honors program?" I asked my mom, sitting at our kitchen table.
"I don't know," she said, turning it back to me. "Why do you want to get into the honors program?"
"They give me $700 a year for textbooks," I said, but if there's anything high school had taught me, it was that sometimes, honesty was not the best policy.
"Well," said my mother, "that, and…"
"I love to learn," I repeated glumly. My mom laughed. I thumped my head on the table. "I changed my mind. When grow up, I want to be a purple tree."
no subject
Date: 2013-07-16 08:47 pm (UTC)Yessssss.
-Nora the Second