College Admissions
Every ambition he’d ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity.
– Lev Grossman, The Magicians
The time I’ve been dreading since moving here, and maybe since having kids, is rapidly approaching for our oldest: college applications. I worried when we moved here that it would be, for me, like an alcoholic moving to an apartment above a bar. I grew up addicted to achievement, lured by the promise that I could have it all, and while I eventually found this to be untrue, the idea that we can be judged by what we’ve accomplished was so deeply engrained during such a formative time in my life that it’s hard not to see my own kids through that lens.
And around here, the ultimate marker of what your kids have accomplished is college admissions. It’s hard not to feel like it’s the Silicon Valley version of Judgment Day, the unavoidably visible verdict of the past years or even decade of parenting. Because yes, people angle early for those Ivy Leagues—no teenager accidentally takes the max number of AP courses while doing year-round varsity sports, playing an instrument and inventing an app—that stuff takes strategizing. You specialize early, hire college counselors, play the game and work your kid hard.
Around here, you decide pretty early on whether you want to play the game. However innocent your initial intentions, it’s hard to touch any kind of activity without realizing that everyone else is doing it relatively intensely: do you take your kid out or find a less-intense option, hoping they won’t be too behind later on or that it won’t matter if they are? Or do you keep them in, hoping it won’t change you all for the worse? Because that’s the thing: playing the game comes at a cost. We’ve experienced that first-hand as our kids have at times become so busy they’re rarely home, or constantly anxious, or unable to make time for such un-resume-friendly activities as church or hanging out with friends. These things often happen along a slippery slope, so gradually and subconsciously that it’s surprisingly difficult to detect. No one wakes up one day and says, wow, my identity has become completely wrapped up in my ability to do this one activity well or to be perfect at everything—it just happens.
I have become increasingly convinced that it is not possible to be an Ivy League shoo-in while also living a balanced, spiritually healthy, relationally rich life. Statistics and life experience have also convinced me that an elite college education in no way guarantees future life success—arguably, the skills that determine whether one is truly happy and well in later life have a lot more to do with non-resume skills like character, values, one’s ability to make good judgments, to see oneself clearly and relate with others well.
That said, we’re not completely bucking the system either. We appreciate the benefits of various activities and want to be integrated within the community—we’re just trying to do it for mostly-non-resume reasons and in ways that are tailored to the particular personality and development of each child. Which is easier said than done, to the point where I am constantly second-guessing myself. Is it okay for one child to want to make Junior Olympics (and how much should we do to help him get there?) while another barely wants to do anything (how much do we push them?)? How exactly does one track spiritual development, or do you just seed opportunities, model what you can, and hope something takes? Question marks all around.
My husband seems a lot more grounded about this. We stick to what we know is most important, he maintains. We give them the opportunities we can and that we think they need and that our family schedule can sustain without losing too much time together. We never tell them they have to get into a good college (they hear that enough). We don’t compare (that one is hard). And they will be okay. It’s not up to us anyway in the end.
I like to think his equanimity is the hard-earned result of a non-linear path in life. He likes to tell incoming Stanford medical students that he didn’t get into medical school the first time around, just to burst the bubble of projected perfection that seems to be in the air there. Me, I have had a straighter shot in life, and have to check the impulse that desires the same for my kids, as if it were all as effortless as people like to pretend it is. I have to remind myself that the future of my children is not something I can manufacture or curate, as if they were some kind of product, some sign of my own competence, rather than whole, unique beings who will walk their own particular paths in life. As if their worth, or mine, could be reduced to a single sentence on an admissions letter. Stated baldly like that, the idea seems preposterous—and yet, it feels like the unspoken crux of the machinery operating so much of people’s comings and goings. I have to see through all that, if I want my children to.
Summer is upon us, that time when we try to strike some amorphous balance between enrichment and relaxation for our kids while retaining our own sanity. It always feels like a grand experiment, and this year is no different, with a mix of old and new camps as well as extended time at home that we’ll attempt to fill with meaningful projects but that will probably devolve into hours reading graphic novels on the couch. Our oldest will be gone for the longest she’s ever been, and that feels like a harbinger of the future, as if the countdown towards her permanent absence has already begun. Our kids are slipping away, one after the other, and I do find that I care less about where they go and what they do than who they become, however more difficult that may be to quantify. I care less about them finally getting in somewhere than having the tools to figure life out after that happens—because it will, for better or worse. And when it does, it will only end up being the beginning, not the end, of what is to come.
