O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• Jean Hanff Korelitz • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Moms

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My sister’s oldest daughter is 18 and a senior in high school.  She is smack dab in the middle of the college admissions process.  She seems a little nervous but not completely overwrought.  She is a mellow cat by nature—similar to a lot of teens nowadays—languid, quiet, relatively self-absorbed and astonishingly savvy in 2 main areas:  technology and looking good.  She is stunning anyway but has the benefits as well of perfect make-up, expensive hair color and extensions, and a fabulous wardrobe.  When my sister goes anywhere snazzy, she uses her daughter as a personal and unfailingly honest stylist.  My niece has a MySpace page and a Facebook page.  She has high speed texting capabilities.  She knows exactly what bag to carry and what shoes to wear.  And yes, on top of all that she does pretty well in school.

So next year she’ll go off to college, somewhere.  She is anxious to leave town—to start something new.  She has no fear.  A long time ago—24 years ago,  I went off to college—in a big Ford Econoline van with rainbow stripes.  I was petrified.  And went I got to my dorm—I unloaded all my crap and then went down to the lounge area to use the PAY PHONE to call my parents to let them know I had made it safely.  Then I didn’t talk to them again until I had my phone line installed in my dorm room which was maybe a week later—the answering machine purchase was maybe a month after that.  We did have a white board on our dorm room door so if someone came by to see you they could leave you a message—with a pen.

At Freshman orientation we got a Face Book—which then was an actual book with pictures of all the freshmen.  My name and another girl’s name were accidentally switched so guys who recognized me in the quad would call out, “Hi Stacy” and I usually waved even though that’s not my name. 

So for 4 years (or so) our technology didn’t change all that much—this was 1985 through 1989.  I wrote most of my papers on the typewriters in the library or I would borrow a dorm neighbor’s big IBM computer and pray to the gods that the old dot matrix printer would get the thing printed out in time to make it to class. 

The only way to contact professors was during their office hours which were posted in the department.  The only way to know the homework/ reading assignment was to show up to class—at least on the first day so you’d have the syllabus. 

Socially, my gorgeous niece is far more sophisticated than I ever was at her age.  But I don’t know, somehow, even without being able to contact everyone at every moment and see their picture before I met them-- and know everything about them and all their friends and their “status” -- and know where they are every flippin’ second, we all had a pretty good time.  Not to implicate myself, but I do know some people who were even able to procure illicit substances without the use of cell phones. 

My niece is amazed that I had dates—even relationships—without a cell phone or email etc. 

“How did they reach you?”

“They would call the regular phone and leave a message on the answering machine or come by and visit.  We sometimes actually spoke face to face.”

“What if you left for the night or something?”

“Then I would talk to them the next day! Or whenever I got back—or they would find my roommate or my friends who would tell them where I was and then they would walk to the library or café or wherever and find me if they really wanted to.”

  And by the way, sometimes it was nice to disappear—sometimes it’s good to get away and really be away.  That’s impossible now.  Now you are utterly accountable.  Everyone knows that if they phone you and you don’t pick up— you are looking at that person’s name on your phone and choosing not to answer.  Where’s the fun in that?  Where’s the mystery?

Once I was sort-of segue-ing from one boyfriend to the next with an unfortunate, minor overlap but was able to just leave campus without causing an APB because I hadn’t twittered within the last 15 minutes.  I went up to San Francisco and then Mill Valley and came back the next day, and everyone survived without me for 24 whole hours.

Kids now will stare in awe at seemingly old-fashioned stories like these and they will inevitably say something along the lines of: “Initially, you know, I got my phone for emergencies and so my mom would know where I was….what if something happened?”

Well, I’ll tell you, oh modern day child, stuff did happen, all the time—and unless you had a parent worrying that you eventually needed to check in with, not everyone knew when stuff happened to you. As a matter of fact, NOT EVERYONE KNEW EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT OR DID EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY.  Imagine that?!

Lots of stuff did happen during that 4 + years that I was young and away from home.  As a matter of fact, I was in San Francisco with my then boyfriend during the earthquake in 1989.  I’m an old California earthquake veteran, and I’ve got to tell you—that was a big quake—bigger than Northridge for sure, and more damaging.  We were right in the Marina when it hit.  People were screaming, clutching their hearts—all the power went out for the rest of the night—no traffic signals so no driving.  They wouldn’t let us back in to his apartment as it was an older building so we spent the night with hundreds of other people in a park on Nob Hill.  All we could hear was the whap whap of helicopter rotors; all we could see was the glow of fires.  One guy had a transistor radio, and that’s how we heard about the freeway collapsing.  Every pay phone had a line of people and all the telephone circuits were busy anyway.  I was unable to reach my parents in Southern California until the following afternoon when I got back to campus.  They didn’t know if I was alive or dead until that time.  Stuff happened.  Our expectations for speed and dissemination of information were much lower.

And along the same lines I went to Europe for a few months with a girlfriend after I graduated.  I sent postcards periodically.  That was it.  I told them about my trip when I got home!  They did not get daily updates on a blog or what have you.  And I really FELT independent for the first time in my life.  Would I ever let my daughters do that now?  Probably not.  And that’s sad I guess.  Maybe we know just enough to be afraid.

What’s amazing in hindsight is that my college experience had more in common in terms of technology/recreation etc. with my parents experience than it will with my daughters’ eventual experience or with my niece’s experience beginning next year.  In other words—the 80’s were more like the 50’s than the present day.  Our courting rituals if you will, were pretty much the old tried and true—phone, flowers, dates, make-out in a car.  My niece tells me kids break up via text and have i-chat dates when they are grounded.  And don’t get me started on the sexting. 

(I must say though, for someone like me, who every now and again had a tough time getting to class—it would have been nice to have the on-line option.  I’d love to do the whole academic part over again knowing what I know now… blah blah blah…  youth is wasted on the young….cliche cliché cliché!)

Of course, I had to ask my niece what she’s interested in—what she wants to be when she grows up.  She has no clue of course, no one does—except for the lucky few who have medical/ law school dreams and the stamina to make it happen.  BUT, she does know that she wants to be famous.  Not a famous singer.  Not an oscar-winning actress.  Not a world renowned archaelogist.  Just famous.  For being famous.  Like Nicole Ritchie and Tila Tequila.  And so do most of her friends.

They call my niece’s generation the “Me Generation.”  Dr. Drew Pinsky has written a fascinating book called The Mirror Effect and Jean Twenge wrote one called The Narcissism Epidemic—both exploring the rampant self-absorption in our culture and specifically our youth today.

What’s caused this?  Well for starters, the generation of parents just after our own had an entirely different set of rules—they were just on the other side of the sexual revolution, had possibly experienced a more liberal youth themselves and so consequently the kids now have grown up with virtually no limits.  The parenting has been very touchy-feely—very “my child is the center of the universe”--and almost entirely lacking the boundaries and structures that most of us had as kids.  This leads to young adults who expect a lot from others and think a lot of themselves and desire instant gratification ALL OF THE TIME.  So you couple that with a massive surge in technological capabilities and the recent rise in reality TV (low production costs—high viewer count) and you get a bunch of kids who really believe that they are the center of the universe.  Add on top of that a wildly celebrity obsessed culture (with a very loose interpretation of celebrity) and suddenly everyone wants to be famous or infamous, and it’s conceivable that they could be! (if your definition of fame is looking like an idiot on a reality TV show or YouTube.)

Our entire culture has become a virtual utopia for narcissists, and a real narcissist is a scary individual, but of course they are by far the most fun to watch—like a train wreck might be fun to watch from a distance.  Eventually the train explodes just like eventually the chick who thinks she’s all that and a bag of chips will implode in front of your very eyes on Flavor of Love 2.

I think we are all a little naturally voyeuristic or at least curious, but one can know too much.  I think we are all also naturally a little bit self-destructive—some of us more than others.  It’s sometimes –not gratifying because that sounds creepy, but maybe just slightly soothing when we discover that  those “perfect” people reveal themselves to be not so perfect.  (Tiger Woods and the rest of the gang.)  But reading the texts between Tiger and mistress #1?  I don’t know.  Poor Elin.  20 years ago, she would have never seen the faces of the women or had to hear them spout off --assuming she had ever found out at all.  I’m not condoning what he did, I’m just saying that our ability to get every last gory detail has overridden our natural self preservation.  And too, those of us whose little self-destructive trait is a little more powerful than others, there is that moment of recognition and then sort-of breathless relief, “there but for the grace of God go I.”  If I had been even a C-list celebrity when I was in my late teens and early twenties and people had been photographing me at parties etc.???? Forget about it.  Let me put it this way, I could never run for any sort-of office—public or otherwise—way too many skeletons.  At least then, though, the skeletons stayed in the closet, mostly.

Ok, so I went off on a little “Me Generation” tangent there but was leading up to the question, how does a kid in this day and age write a college application that is going to stand out?  How do we get our kids into the good schools?  Any schools?

 Jean Hanff Korelitz book ADMISSION reveals some acute and interesting insights into the deeply mysterious process of college application.  Korelitz is a great writer who not only provides us with a detailed view of the whole admissions ordeal but also tells a fairly complicated tale involving events from the protagonist’s past as well her present challenges.

 The main character, Portia, is on the admissions committee at Princeton.  And of course, the author of the book, did the same—so this is real inside scoop.  Each chapter begins with an excerpt, anonymous of course, from an actual college application.  This provides a brief snapshot into the personalities of these kids who are going through this complicated rite of passage which can be extraordinarily expensive and emotional.  What does a kid do nowadays to set himself apart? It is not enough to get perfect scores on SAT’s.  It is not enough to have a GPA of 5.0 or better.  Musical talent?  Maybe.  Athletic ability?  Maybe.  All of the above.   Maybe.   The entire process is wildly subjective and the only thing the committees can do is make sure there are enough people reading the applications to force votes on the kids who even make it past the first cut.

 Let’s take another little walk down memory lane to 1985 when I applied to colleges.  I had decent grades, decent scores and was “semi-recruited” to play on the volleyball team at Stanford.  I was a “semi-legacy” but wasn’t banking on that because my older sister applied twice and did not get in.  Somehow I managed to slip through the cracks and was admitted.  I was thrilled obviously, but was TOTALLY overwhelmed and intimidated by the intellectual powerhouses who were my classmates.  There were the “toll-free” kids—meaning double 800’s on SAT’s—lots of them.  There were kids who were already HIRED to work in various parts of the chemistry and particle physics departments because they had been recruited for THOSE reasons.  This was right before all the crazy dot com stuff, and many of my classmates and those a little younger are the first kids who started designing all that software and the beginnings of the gaming industry etc.  These are SMART people.  Plus, most of them had already been away from home for four years at boarding school.  They thought my stories of public school were hilarious and strange: “You had a whole building for mentally challenged kids?”  (Apparently, they don’t have Special Ed. at Exeter.)

 I felt totally out of my league—and maybe, who knows, I took someone’s spot who would have benefitted more from and/or taken better advantage of the educational opportunities at Stanford.  I didn’t feel even remotely close to confident until I declared my major/minor and sort-of found my “people” in the English and creative writing departments.  Even then—Christ, even at graduation, I kinda felt like I was faking it.

 Anyway, my point is, there was obviously someone on THAT admissions committee who wanted a little more variety in the class of ’89—lucky for me.  When it comes time for my daughters to go through this…I really want to make them apply to a lot of places—well known universities, but also maybe the smaller schools that maybe don’t have Pac-10 football teams but also may be somewhat more manageable at age 18.  Actually I would love to have the new rule be: work for a year—travel a bit—then go to college—at least then there’s a possibility you could be ready.  Most kids aren’t.  I don’t think.  And if you’ve never been away from home and been RADICALLY sheltered and curfewed for all of high school—there is a slight tendency to go a little nuts at the beginning.  Couple that with the above-mentioned self-destructive trait, and you have a potential recipe for disaster—again not to implicate myself.

 Back to the book, Portia is passionate about her job and finds herself often having to defend the university’s perspectives in social situations.  These rants/ arguments make for extremely interesting reading.  For example—legacy kids: deny them and the family/ possibly board of trustees etc. are angry and maybe tempted to NOT fund that new amphitheater, but on the other hand-- admit them and all those gifted kids who weren’t lucky enough to be “born into a Princeton legacy” are obviously going to feel short changed.

 For reasons of her own, Portia finds herself fighting for a completely self taught kid from a rural area who is obviously brilliant but not only has terrible grades but has barely been to school.  So yes, an academic environment like Princeton’s would be an amazing opportunity and an incredibly stimulating place for a kid like that, but what about all the kids who busted their humps for years to make their applications stand out above the rest? OR what about the kid who not only has managed all A’s and great test scores but has done so in South Central LA with a single mother working two jobs etc. etc. and hasn’t had every opportunity handed to him—hasn’t had it easy, in other words.

 What’s interesting and beyond complicated is that one can make the argument either way for every single application the school receives—every single KID—because each of those packets is a KID.  And for some kids, most kids, whether or not they get into Princeton or Stanford/ Yale/ USC wherever is really going to make or break them especially when we are talking about kids who have RARELY failed, RARELY been disappointed, and RARELY been denied something they have sought to achieve.   

 When I was teaching, I also served on the admissions committee for Kindergarten, and though that was obviously not comparable to admissions to college; for those parents desperately trying to get their 4-5 year old children into one of the “better” private schools, you better believe it was as desperate and cutthroat.  To them, this was the first step toward that ultimate university goal.  And because we, as the teachers, did the actual testing, we met and worked with every single child.  Believe me, I went to bat for some kids who I believed needed to be at a place like this school, but convincing an entire committee is not an easy thing to do especially when you have to answer to administrators who then need to answer to the parents themselves. 

 It is a similar process, and at the time it was one of the hardest parts of the job.  I don’t think I could do Portia’s job.  There’s a need for a certain objectivity—a willingness and an ability to draw the line—to separate the men from the boys—if you will-- and then move on.  You can’t get too close to it—to those packets—those thick folders representing lives of 17-18 year olds on the cusp of well, everything!  In this engrossing and compelling novel, Portia struggles with it as well and eventually makes a pretty mind-blowing and life altering decision.  It’s a great read especially for those of us moms with high schoolers gearing up for the application process or in the midst of it.

 (Korelitz is also the author of The Sabbathday River which is quite good as well.)