An inability to pronounce one’s name can meddle with one’s self-esteem. Child psychologists might study this some day: take a roomful of first-generation American children and ask them to introduce themselves to one another, then watch them struggle to eke out the syllables on loan from the lands their parents left behind.
I wrote a thesis. I wrote it and bound it and turned it in. I am proud of my thesis and I think I produced a piece of research that is interesting and substantial.
We are a little hung-over, a little loud, a little late. As my friend Giri drives the car up a dusty, unpaved road, my friend Louise and I comment on how rustic the rough wooden fence separating from the field from Princeton Friends Meeting is.
Around sixth or seventh grade I remember discussing religion with a friend. We were in the backseat of her car and her mother, who was driving, politely asked me if I attended any type of Christian services.
1. ‘Cody’ was my friend’s brother and the only one who didn’t gasp as I lowered all seventy pounds of me into the crowded hot tub. “You’re disgusting,” one of the girls said, with awe, my first experience with the appropriation of insulting words as compliments. Later we spun a champagne bottle on the cold basement floor and I landed on him. My hair smelled stale from pool chemicals as it brushed wet against his face. He was my crush that whole year, until he didn’t make it into advanced math and I grinded with another boy at the seventh-grade dance.
I didn’t sleep the night before my thesis was due. This is perhaps unsurprising to you. When it happened, it was unsurprising to me too, but it was also novel. I had never before worked through the night and not slept … Read More
I always assumed that I would join an eating club, but put no effort into understanding the process of joining. As such, I found myself in a foreign country, learning that I had not only missed the first round of sign-ins, but that bicker started immediately after break.
In middle school and high school, I was a wrapper. I wrapped every morning Monday through Friday of the academic year, as well as the occasional Sunday or summer day when possessed by the wrap spirit. I wrapped quietly and meticulously, with focus, usually one among an extended posse but sometimes solo. I haven’t wrapped since July, but I’m confident that I could pick it up again if I wanted to. I came of age as a wrapper, and I remain surrounded by the wrap’s ebon tendrils.
What am I supposed to do? I want you to tell me. I want you to tell me what am I supposed to do. Before you answer, I’ll tell you my story, and I’ll tell you hers. And then, I … Read More
When I googled the meaning of my last name, I felt the same way I felt while visiting the museum at Gettysburg when a docent urged me to search the database and see if my ancestors had been involved in the battle.
The way it came to me was in a letter. I think a lot of people got them, but I don’t know. It was from Dean Rapelye or maybe Malkiel, and it said something like “you are one of the particularly outstanding students admitted” and to “please consider coming to Princeton.”
A few months ago, a prospective student from my high school (let’s call her “Susan”) visited Princeton. I did not know her—her interests, her talents, her social proclivities—and yet I found myself on the verge of launching into a speech about how Princeton is the best school—probably in the world—and how she would in all likelihood be denying herself the possibility of self-transcendence if she applied elsewhere early action.
