Are All These Brochures Really Necessary?
When I was younger, I used to be sad when, each day, the mail was brought in and there was nothing for me. The rare letter would make me ecstatic, and I would read it over and over again.
If I reacted similarly to every piece of snail mail I get these days, I am not sure I would ever move from a spot in front of the mailbox. I would be frozen in time, one shorthaired high school student intently reading each � and every � piece of junk mail � from colleges I have never heard about.
Just in the past four days, letters have arrived from Macalester College, Butler, Tulane, Swarthmore College, Ohio Wesleyan, Washington and Lee, New York University, Loyola University Chicago -- Chicago�s Jesuit University, Columbia, Lehigh, University of Rochester, St. John�s College, Albion College, William & Mary, Gustavus Adolphus College, Randolph-Macon Woman�s College, Saint Louis, Reed College, and Ohio State.
All the money spent on this unanswered correspondence could have gone towards so many scholarships � and just think how many forests would still be standing! Macalester�s letter came in a big 8 by 11.5 inch envelope, complete with graphics of autumn leaves and a quote from the Princeton Review. Columbia University, with its lofty list of previous students including the writer Jack Kerouac, is tempting -- like that black flamenco dress I saw at Saks in Cincinnati. Butler University�s envelope ended up being a half an inch thick with an advertising brochure that displayed � quite well, I might add � the skill of the graphic design firm they hired. And a Jesuit university � really, do I look like a Jesuit?
And that is the thing. I am sure none of these colleges had ever heard of a Miss Lisa Gumerman before this year. Judging from the many postscripts I have seen, most probably did not until the PSAT results hit the proverbial street, and the colleges fell upon them like chickens upon so many grains of corn � think the Cinderella cartoon. Now I have pamphlets about university�s honors colleges spilling out of the recycling bin, inviting me to �challenging and highly selective� colleges. One of my friends from school said that since December 7, she has gotten 79 e-mails from colleges � 79! I am glad that my family has a separate e-mail account set up to collect such sophisticated spamming material. If we did not, I would probably be frozen in time in front of the computer, selecting and deleting, selecting and deleting, selecting and deleting till each unsolicited e-mail was eradicated from my inbox.
Ah, here is another envelope, hiding under a message for my sister from the Sierra Club. This one is from Oberlin College; I have heard of Oberlin � we learned about it in American History my freshman year. This letter, like the one from Butler University, boasts a spiffy brochure advertising the school as a place for the intellectual, the socially involved, the artistically inclined. Sounds interesting � they have an honors college, too. But oh, look, no journalism major offered � the list goes straight from Jewish studies to Latin American studies. Though that creative writing major option does look exciting. And a dance major too � that looks positively luscious � and all those majors in music! Oh my.
As enticing as those prim white letters with their colorful brochures look, I already have a direction. I have joked all along that my best profession would be a serial student, and that does make me one of the people �passionate about learning� that all these universities are looking for, but there are absolutely too many things to be passionate about. By now, after being pounded with the idea all through high school that �college comes sooner than you think,� I have actually decided where I want to go, what I want to go into, even adjusting my schedule for next year accordingly: incredible amounts of English, journalism, creative writing, and minute amounts of math and science, as much as I love them. I know where I am going. Not the same place as the letters are going, though � those are going into the recycling bin!