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Jennifer just got accepted to Harvard.
Matt scored 2020 on his SATs.
James can run a mile in 4 minutes 49 seconds.
I could use some Tylenol.
When the New York Times ran an article on area high school kids and their quest for the coveted thick college acceptance envelopes this past weekend, I started to feel a deep sense of dread. Though we are quite a few years from college hunting around here, the article made me second guess my long-standing philosophy on raising kids: Less is more.
See, I'm a fan of the aimless afternoon. I believe that kids will learn as much from building a make-shift fort in the woods with their friends as they will from a Cub Scouts meeting. I believe that eight-year-olds shouldn't have to travel half-way across the state to compete against other soccer players when there are kids right in town who play the sport. I believe it's better to get B-pluses than A's and an ulcer. When it comes to childhood, I believe that less is more.
But many of the kids profiled in the article seem like both academic and extracurricular superstars. I mean, I didn't even know there was such a thing as a 4.75 grade point average until I read about a New Jersey senior who has her heart set on attending Columbia or Cornell. She called herself "laid-back and down to earth." Imagine what she'd do if she applied herself. After all, Yale and Princeton both rejected her.
Huh?
The competition for college appears to have become so intense that I bet I couldn't get even into my alma mater now. By the modern scoring system, my SATs would be around 1700, and yet, the average incoming freshman at Boston University scores around 1915. (They also pay about $44,000 a year for tuition and such, but that's another scary story altogether.)
Now I have a feeling that I'm going to have to take back the grand speech I had delivered to my kids over my high school yearbook the day before the article ran. I'd opened the 1985 Nuggetto the page with a photo of me next to a boy from my class.
"See this?" I told my kids, pointing to the picture that looks like a shot from VH1's "Big 80's." They nodded.
"That boy and I were voted Most Likely to Succeed by our high school class," I said. And then I pointed to the boy in the picture.
"He was the class valedictorian," I explained, "which means he had the best grades out of everyone in the grade." Then I pointed to my photo.
"Do you think I was number two in the class?" My kids shrugged.
"I was number 52," I admitted. "I had a B-plus average."
I remembered what my cousin had said when he read my college applications, "You're an extra-curricular pro!" And then I told my kids, "But I was senior class president, captain of the soccer team and the editor of the creative writing magazine," I said. I pointed to the boy voted Most Likely to Succeed by my senior class, and said, "And he wasn't."
"My point is that you don't have to be perfect to get ahead. Just do your best, and please, take time to enjoy yourself," I said. I was going to add that just because 240 seventeen-year-olds think you're going to become a success, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will, but I left it at that.
The next day, I read that article in the newspaper, andnow I wonder if you really do have to be a both the valedictorian and the "extracurricular pro" to get into a top college these days - if my kids have to be both to get into a school like my alma mater. I wonder if they'll have to give up their aimless afternoons.
I re-read the article, taking note of what one Eagle Scout had offered: "I've camped in hurricanes and subzero temperatures. I can survive most situations."
Me? I'm just hoping we make it through the college application process.
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