Dear Admissions Officers at Brown:
You rejected me last year.
I knew it would happen. I was at my state science fair when I got the email. My stomach sunk immediately, faster than an anchor dropped at sea. I knew, looking at it, that I’d been rejected. Don’t ask me how I know—my stomach just senses bad things, my body tries to brace me for the pain it knows is coming. My mom didn’t believe me, though, and she urged me to open it. Against my better judgment, I did, and knew instantly that I’d been correct. You don’t have to read much when it comes to rejection letters—just the first word, really. If it doesn’t congratulate you, you’re not in.
I don’t think you know just how badly that fractured me. It was all I could think about for the next three months. Even longer, really. I’d avoid any mention of your school’s name. “Brown,” they’d say, and I’d shy away. Whenever I read about another student somewhere in the country, even in my state, who’d been accepted, I’d beat myself up, punish myself for not doing better, for not being better. Television and books exacerbated the wound, because it appears as if authors and directors really like for their college-bound characters to attend a prestigious university like yours. My failure, in many ways, was inescapable.
I did truly want to attend your school. It wasn’t just for the prestige. What you put into college, no matter the college, is what you get out of it. I knew that, so the reason I applied to your school wasn’t because it consistently made the top ten in lists. I’d researched your school, swallowed every morsel of information I could sink my teeth into. I flew through the interview, devoured blogs detailing daily life. It fit, you know? I loved the campus. Loved the academics, the programs. Loved the people. I mistakenly believed that would be good enough. When it wasn’t, I didn’t know what to do. I made a crucial error: I overlooked the positives in my life to focus on the negatives. I forgot that I’d been accepted into eleven other great colleges and tore myself apart for the few that did reject me. Including you.
The power you held over me still stuns me to this day. The extent to which I loathed myself for my failure astounds me. I punished myself, and for what? I wasn’t good enough, yeah. So what? Who cares? I was good enough for other colleges. I didn’t have to be good enough for yours—but somehow I’d tied my self-worth to your decision, you who do not know me, and when you cut the cord I fell hard. I got rejected, yes. Thousands get rejected every day, and for things much more important than a top university. Some get rejected from jobs that are necessary to keep a roof over one’s head. Some get rejected from aid that is the only thing that can save one’s life. I’m well aware that pain isn’t a competition nor is it comparable. Just because someone’s going through something worse doesn’t diminish what I’m going through, doesn’t make my pain go away. I know this. But it’s good to put your woes into perspective sometimes.
I don’t even think I could’ve afforded your college had I been accepted. I’m middle class, you know, stuck in that awkward space where financial aid teams think you can afford their college when you really can’t. So even had I been accepted, I likely wouldn’t have been able to attend. But heck, I can barely afford the college I attend now, a college I have grown to adore.
I enjoy my time at Oxford College, even if it took me a year to get here. That’s the thing, see, the thing I always knew would happen. First day of high school, we’re in PE, I’m surrounded by thirty strangers, and our teacher asks us to do a portrait of various things—what means most to us in a relationship, our favorite thing to do, what we’re good at, what we wish we were good at. You get the picture. For the very first prompt, that relationship one, I drew—very messily—the image of a dog. For loyalty. It doesn’t matter what relationship I’m in, a relationship with an idea or a campus, I’m in it for the long haul. I don’t give up. I’ve never given up on a relationship, because life is relationships. That’s all it ever is. To people, to animals, to the environment, to jobs, to yourself. Life is relationships and I intend to be loyal to every part of it.
I was always told to be honest in college applications, but I was never fully honest in this way and I like that I’m doing this because finally I have the chance to be truthful with zero repercussions. It’s not like I lied my senior year—I told the truth, yes, but it was wrapped up in a pretty little package and shoved under a nicely decorated tree and it wasn’t all I wanted to say. I’m not a big believer in punishing people for “lying by omission”—I could get into a whole debate on whether omitting a fact even constitutes as lying if you’re not in a position of power—but I dunno, I’m tired of being stifled all the time and this year’s the year I can finally fly free.
There’s always something that needs to be done, something that needs to be said. Every word I write is confined within the limits of an assignment or society’s expectations. I always have to think about who might be reading what I write in the fear that I might inadvertently reveal something I never wanted to. I’m a private person. I don’t like people knowing things about me; I see it as sharing weakness. It’s like handing people bullets for the gun everyone keeps nearby to hurt others, bullets forged especially to pierce my armor. But you, reading this, it doesn’t matter. You don’t know me. You can’t know me. So I can hand you the bullets but you wouldn’t know where to take aim. I’m safe.
I’m safe from you, at least. Not from the world. Sometimes life is so heavy. It’s gravity and it’s anchors and it drags me down so, so low. Sometimes it’s too much effort to breathe, and it’s a good thing the heart beats automatically or I’m sure it’d feel like too much work to keep it pumping as well. I take shallow breaths sometimes, breathing through my nose so I don’t disturb anyone else, but then sharp pins pierce my lungs and I have to take deep, shuddering breaths and it feels like those stupid competitions we used to hold as children in the pool, the ones where we see who can hold their breath the longest. I emerge from the water and I take huge gasping breaths but I have to muffle it so no one knows I was holding the air in my body to begin with because I don’t like feeling like I’m taking up too much space just by existing. They’d be worried, I think. They’d ask me why I hide the life inside me and don’t let it free. I can’t tell them that I don’t know. That’d only worry them more.
I can’t tell them about these thoughts that run through my body as if on conveyer belts, can’t tell them how I sleep to escape, can’t tell them how sometimes my body shuts down and I can’t find the switch to let it rumble back to life. If I tell them it all means I can’t handle it, you know?
And I can’t some days, not really.
Do you know what I was told to say in order to have a better chance at getting accepted to your college? I was told to say that my school doesn’t challenge me, that I am tired of being the smartest person in my class. Obviously, I was supposed to fluff it up, put my words through a Build-A-Bear workshop to make them pretty and cute. But I refuse, absolutely refuse, to ever say I am the smartest in a class. Even in my strongest subjects, even if I have the highest grade, I won’t say I am the smartest. Why? Because genius comes in many forms, many of which are never tested in a classroom.
Perhaps it appears as if I am the best in class, but that could be because there is someone shyer than me who doesn’t’t speak up. In life, there will always be someone better than me and there will always be someone worse than me. Everyone has different strengths. A person who struggles in English is maybe considered a genius on the piano. How can I, then, who doesn’t even play the piano, be better than him simply because I enjoy English? I am not the smartest in class, and my school does challenge me. At yours I will be challenged as well, more than I am now, and that’s something I’m looking for—but never will I be the smartest in a class, and never will I not be challenged. If I am not challenged then I am not experiencing enough of the place at which I reside, and that’s on me.
Listen, you likely read many applications this year, and many of them probably made a strong case for entering your college. The numbers shone with promise, the essays swelled with personality. But you know what? All of them have something to hide. Something they aren’t telling you. Not one of them is whole. If they’re applying to your college and if you’re considering acceptance, know this: They’re broken too. They’ve given up pieces of themselves in order to qualify. It’s not up to me to say if they’ve lost good or bad pieces, but know that none of them is whole. Some will be seeking your college to fill those pieces of themselves they so desperately want back. I was like that. You’ll accept a few of those people, but they’ll quickly find that words of acceptance on a page won’t heal them. They’ll see that going to your school or any school won’t fix their broken machinery. They’ll try, but in the end only we have the tools to mend ourselves. I’ve started. I’ll finish. I’ve no doubt they will too.
We are supposed to appear strong in in this world and all I’ve done, now, is admit weakness. To you, your decision was probably justified: I don’t belong amongst the strong people at your university. But I am confident in myself so it’s fine. Your opinion of me and my value will no longer hold sway over my own opinion of myself and my value. It’s just not worth it anymore. Death has held power over me, life still does…you no longer do. But I am not selfish nor am I foolish. Just because you no longer hold any power over me doesn’t mean you don’t still hold immense power over others. There are hundreds of thousands of students whose future rests on the tiny black lettering of your decision. Know your strength, please. Know your power. You hold much of it, perhaps more than anybody ever realizes. Please, please, please don’t abuse it.