Those of you who havenโt yet gone through the college admissions process will
think that my novel,
GETTING
IN, surely exaggerates how crazy things get. Those of you who have survived
to tell the tale know the truth - which is that everything I wrote about could
easily have happened, and in fact may have to someone you know.
Iโve spent most of my life writing non-fiction, and at first I thought about
doing it again this time - writing an irreverent parentsโ guide to surviving
college admissions with your sense of humor and perspective intact.
But the world hardly needs another guide book. And besides, to me the family
stories were far more interesting than the question of where a particular kid
happened to get accepted or get turned down. I made up funny subtitles for a
novel, to get myself in the right frame of mind: A Comedy of Bad Manners, or A
Novel of Desire, because the way we behave seemed a far richer subject than the
process itself.
I found myself rereading Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, Dawn Powell, and thinking
about family and ambition and dreams and competition. I began to look at college
as yet another brand name acquisition, and to tally up all the unnatural acts
people are willing to commit to get what they think they want.
And then I had fun with it - stretched it just until it got funny, without ever
losing sight of the truth, which is that parents act out of love, and then that
love goes goofy because there are dozens or hundreds of other parents trying to
do the same thing at the same time. The whole experience gets warped because of
all that energy, until the envelopes and emails arrive, and suddenly everything
settles into place again.
If youโre lucky, that is. Not everyone in
GETTING IN is lucky, not by
a long shot. I think I made them up to make everyone else feel slightly sane by
comparison, as they get ready to send their kids off to college. Or if not sane,
at least not quite so alone.
But once a journalist, always a journalist, so trust me: Thereโs lots of advice
tucked into the narrative.
Please enter me in the contest! The subject matter is a little too deep for me!
(Brenda Rupp 11:13pm May 13, 2010)
My first one to go to callage is going to be senior next year so we will be starting all that fun stuff year and I'm not looking forward to it at all but I'm sure it will be worth it in the long run.
(Vickie Hightower 11:32pm May 13, 2010)
All sorts of funny things happen at college. I transferred schools and needed only one semester to have a minor in French. When I was registering at my new college the guy told me they didn't teach French, that everyone there took Spanish. Finally he said he would take my name and it they had enough to sign up, they would open a French class. Luckily they did.
(Gladys Paradowski 12:09pm May 14, 2010)
Gladts' comment about transfer students reminded me of one of my pet peeves. I had students who only needed one class (or one sememster) and for various reasons transferred closer home. Our institution would accept them and THEN tell them that they couldn't take that one class or semester until they fulfilled OUR prerequisits. It took one student that I knew about two additional years of classwork before she could take the one she needed!
(Karin Tillotson 8:58am May 14, 2010)
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