Dear Harvard Admissions Board,
I know that your job must be overwhelming—you have approximately thirty-thousand hearts to break every spring and so little time to do it. I can’t even imagine the feeling of wading through piles of overachievers’ application essays trying to separate the wheat from … Well, from the rest of the wheat. I hope that putting the process online has significantly reduced the number of paper cuts you must get every March.
My admiration and appreciation aside, no institution should be immune to criticism, not even Harvard Admissions. I don’t know quite how to put this, so I’ll let the words of Michael Bluth speak for me: you’re making a huge mistake. The person with the most potential to succeed, out of anyone I’ve encountered in Cambridge so far, is standing right under your noses.
I’m talking about the Spare Change News guy outside of Au Bon Pain.
For an innovative Harvard graduate, persistence through the most inhospitable circumstances is the key to achieving great things. Sometimes that means spreading your wings only to smack into the windowed skyscrapers of corporate America, and sometimes that means sending out three-dozen resumes with no response. As a local, I can say this much: no one knows a tough crowd like someone who tries to talk to Bostonian pedestrians with someplace to be. Spare Change Guy, though, has a knack for catching the eye and eliciting a smile. That takes some serious guts, and he’s done it day after day for years. He may not sell many papers, but it’s going to take more than a couple (hundred thousand) ‘no’s to stop him from trying.
I’ll also admit that half of us are a p-set away from a very public breakdown in the Science Center, and the other half are so stressed that homicide is starting to sound like a good fix for that roommate who leaves two squares of toilet paper on the roll without replacing it. (Come on, ladies, no one likes that.) Do you know what the Spare Change guy would do? He’d smile hugely and ask you how your day is, and maybe try to sell you something. Not only must he have excellent stress management techniques, but he’s also an entrepreneur. That’s the kind of resilience I wish I had, and the kind of social maturity I want Harvard to represent.
You may wonder why you should admit someone who hasn’t even filled out an application over your teenage physics prodigies. I’ll admit, it’s a bit unconventional, but the oldest school in the country can afford to set a new precedent now and then. One of the best things about Harvard is that I can learn as much from my peers as I do from my professors, and I’ve picked up a thing or two from Spare Change News Guy. Give that man an acceptance letter.
Yours sincerely,
Lauren Covalucci ‘14