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So I've never been in quite this much trouble before, and for someone perpetually on the precipice of procrastination-prompted failure, this is really saying something.
Cue big sigh.
The Greek system attracts a good deal of criticism, but the truth is that fraternities are not distinct from selective living groups in terms of the institutional privilege they enjoy. (They are somewhat different, I would argue, in terms of the less technical and more residual sources of their influence. This explains how those fraternities not formally recognized by the University derive social clout from the well-established brand power of their letters, their authority within the Greek scene intimately tied to the perpetuation of the system at large.)
I dread commencement because I know how it's going to play out.
This year, 14 people applied to be Young Trustee. This embarrassing number reflects-and reinforces-the negative perception among students that only a certain kind of leader, institutional insider, grade grubber or resume builder need apply.
After moving to the suburbs in the seventh grade, I developed an unoriginal theory for why all the pretty, itty-bitty blonde girls sat together at lunch and traveled together with the coordinated grace of a human slinky. I figured beautiful people were recognized for their fine bone structure early on in life, hence increased self-esteem, hence poise. In addition to beautiful people being predisposed to being socially well-adjusted, socially well-adjusted people communed with socially well-adjusted people, and left the rest of us to make do among ourselves.
Consider the following thought experiment.
For a high school senior, the worst part about filling out the College Board CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE is not the $9 fee. Nor is it the additional $16 charge per college. The real tribulations begin with the page that appears after you've "finished" submitting. It lists mysterious codes that correspond to an onslaught of directives, specifying further steps each college requires you take before it can meet your demonstrated need.
What are you doing next year?"
Spring is in the air. Rush is in the works.
The last 24 hours and the next 24 hours will together constitute the most awkward 48 hours of your life thus far. This is assuming you are not engaged and have not met your in-laws. Then again, maybe you will inadvertently meet them today. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
People occasionally tap me on the shoulder to let me know my roommate is brilliant and beautiful. Despite this, Cindy* and I get along marvelously well. And with all due respect to my professors, many of whom are wonderful and all of whom have yet to dole out final grades, rooming with Cindy has been exactly the kind of colorful college learning experience you read about in propagandistic brochures before arrival but never seem to have. I am writing my final column this semester on this experience for mostly selfish reasons, to use the permanence of cyber-storage for once to my advantage. Because ten in years, as I reminisce about my sophomore year at Duke, the exchanges we've had in our tiny room in Few are among the things I will most want to remember.
Any positive comments I receive about my columns are delivered deftly in private. It often feels like prostitution. And the vitriolic comments that do reach the editor are probably deemed unprintable for reasons more compelling than the lack of an attributed author.
There is something worse than your own personal humiliation: bearing witness to a complete stranger's. If that makes no sense to you, you might as well stop reading-you are probably the type to laugh when you see a student take a nose-dive on the quad in her mad Monday morning dash to the bus stop. Your demons go beyond the scope of this column.
When I'm asked about my past struggles, color-enhanced images of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment and Jian Li's problems with Princeton do not come to mind. Misnomers like mathlete and Lucy Liu are neither here nor there and are more likely to make me laugh than frown when inserted in a Russell Peters joke.
Last week The New York Times gave readers a taste of the ridiculous extremes to which Cupid has subjected us all. An article on luxury gift-giving examined the price and production of a standard box of Noka chocolates. While the $2,000/pound price revelation fell short of earth-shaking, even I was a little sad to learn that the advertised "rare, handcrafted, single-estate chocolate truffles" are "molded" blobs of wholesale chocolate, of hazy geographic origin.
The Bears are going to the Super Bowl. What's more surprising is the excitement I feel, the urge to pump the air with my fist and rummage through 418 Facebook groups for the name that appropriately expresses the nuances of my euphoria.
My old high school hasn't been doing so well since I left. A coincidence, of course. Our graduating class thought we'd left our alma mater in decent shape. We championed a referendum that stopped the district from cutting sports and reducing afterschool activities to Scrabble Club and yearbook. We left educational and extracurricular opportunities intact to be seized by future generations. Like our little brothers and sisters; I have one of each.
Many concepts behind elite colleges are somewhat paradoxical-the most notable message being that you will benefit from exposure to a diverse body of students, all of whom are in possession of the skill set required for a solid SAT score.
Supportive of it, outraged by it, or uncomfortably mired in the pros and cons of necessary evil, everybody takes a stance on affirmative action. The divisive stubbornness that typifies the affirmative action debate is disheartening, considering the unlikelihood that all who take a definitive position are well acquainted with the explosion of numbers and relevant statistics at the crux of what has become a complex cost-benefit battle between diversity and meritocracy, inequality and equalization.
