Last Sunday, the Issues Discussion Club published an essay by an anonymous Harker student about the college admissions process. This is a response to that student.

Dear Anonymous,

I read your piece at 8:45 p.m. last Sunday night, right after I finished calculus homework, studied for a physics exam and planned out my UC admission essays, due just a few weeks from now.

Let me be the first to say “Thank you!” for venting the frustrations that every member of our community can identify with: caught in the middle of the College Board, test prep companies, and the universities we apply to, it can seem as if our lives revolve around pleasing shadowy entities that ply our fates.

I can relate to these frustrations as well. You published your piece anonymously, but I’m sure that we’ve met before. I might sit across from you in one of my classes, or perhaps I said hello to you in passing. We go to the same school, attend the same classes, and surely have friends in common. We’re in the same boat.

But reading over your piece, I was surprised by your bleak outlook about the direction that this boat is headed. You claim that we’re studying simply for the sake of an acceptance slip from the college of our choice. You dismiss our internships and course choices as mere stepping stones to reach an end-goal. You assert that there’s little that we can do to break free of the system.

It’s a dark, dreary existence you describe, but maybe the picture is a little brighter than you imagine it to be. It is just as easy to feel optimistic about our community as it is to feel cynical about it.

During last year’s Baccalaureate, retired statistics teacher Mary Mortlock asked the student body to do things “just because.” Many students took her advice seriously. A friend of mine spent this past summer researching the link between decolonization and revolution in America and Algeria, a project motivated by intense personal interest.. Another started building a proof-of-concept fusion reactor in his spare time. There are far easier ways to pad a résumé than doing either of those things. In both cases, they did a lot more than “fetching coffee for university hospital doctors.”

You go on to classify  students as “STEM people” and “humanities people.”  Why can’t we be both? My passion for journalism in no way diminishes my interest in research; if anything, they build off each other. The world of research has offered me an incredible wealth of topics to write stories about. In turn, my reporting about climate change exposed me to research questions that I explored in my biology class. With regard to my course selections: even if I have no intention at all to become a historian, taking AP World History enhanced my understanding of other cultures, religions and lifestyles around the globe. Contrary to your stereotyping, I can (gasp) be interested in more than one subject.

And finally, your article casually takes for granted that everyone attending this school comes from an affluent family with a Mercedes Benz and a prime multi-million dollar house in the suburbs of Silicon Valley. Given the need-based financial aid that Harker offers and the diversity of circumstances that families experience, this assumption is false.

In short, you paint our community with too broad of a brush. Yes, some students make attending Harvard or Princeton the express purpose of their high school careers, but just as many harbor deep affinities for the subjects they love.

Speaking of cynicism, our good friend and TV satirist Stephen Colbert had some pretty pointed remarks about it:

“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.” – Stephen Colbert

It’s easy to claim that we’re trapped in a pointless, materialistic college admissions process on the road to an even more pointless, more materialistic life. I have faith, though, that our community contains many passionate individuals who do not match the stressed, shallow caricature of a high school senior that you have drawn. They will thrive no matter what the college admissions officers have to say.

Sincerely,

Vivek Bharadwaj