Post 20: College

In the beginning of the movie "A Beautiful Mind," a professor at Princeton talked to the incoming class.

"Mathematicians won the war. Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes... and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians... like you. The stated goal of the Soviets is global Communism. In medicine or economics, in technology or space, battle lines are being drawn. To triumph, we need results. Publishable, applicable results. Now who among you will be the next Morse? The next Einstein? Who among you will be the vanguard of democracy, freedom, and discovery? Today, we bequeath America's future into your able hands. Welcome to Princeton, gentlemen."

Ironically, though I had no intention of doing so, this quote has some distant ties to "The Singer Solution for World Poverty," in that it talks about how when you are given something, it is your obligation to use it properly and to not abuse it. I've talked about this topic in various other posts, so on to the point I intended to make.

Here at Punahou, though everyone likes to have fun, or rather, their own idea of fun, Punahou is primarily just a prep-school, intended for turning teenagers into functioning college students. On that note, here I sit, chemistry books and AP exam study books piled around me, papers written in Japanese, Math-ese, and English all alike tickling the bottom of my feet, crinkling to their demise, yet always holding out. The clock ticks twice as fast as it should, especially as the hours grow late proceeded by those of early. We're in hell.

At times like these, where I am piled in over my head in work, with any little annoyance and every little extra obligation piled and spilled over on my plate, I wonder if all this work, if all these honors courses, AP courses, are really worth this extra work, or if they're just extraneous. I watched my sister battle her way through high school, and watched all those extra courses and extra hours at school participating in various clubs pay off. Why did it seem as though all that work didn't phase her at all? Why was it that all the work she did for school always yielded a result and always seemed pragmatic?

What does college really do for you? I mean, whether you graduate a lawyer from Harvard, or a lawyer from UH (not that I'm implying anything about UH), you still have the same degree, and you still have the same status out there in the real world. So what is the purpose of spending more money to get just a status of going to a top university?

As I see applications come back, negative for the top schools, or even those who I believe to be very much qualified to top universities not even apply to top schools, for having the mindset that it was impossible for them, a part of me wants to give up, but a part of me wants to try even harder. For some reason, I believe that all my efforts now will not be for naught. Am I just deluding myself in the fake fantasy of ME getting into what I consider to be a good school?

Perhaps it is an obligation which we all have to perform to our best abilities. After all, WE, the students, are not the ones paying upwards of 15 grand a year for an education; we are the ones who have the privilege of getting a good high school education, or even an education at all. At this point, the papers clinging to the bottom of my feet don't seem to phase me as much. The papers huddled around me don't seem as intimidating. The onslaught of an endless cycle of sleep, homework, school, sports, and any other obligation, leading right back to homework every time doesn't seem as daunting. Perhaps, I have come to peace with my obligations.

Why is it that all that work seemed so easy for my sister and many other past seniors I knew seem to be so hard in penchant difficulty? Maybe, that it just seemed that way, and my sister and all those other seniors had to struggle just as much to become who they are and to get into where they are now. Maybe, it was just an act: to stare tests and other seemingly impossible projects, papers, and homework in the face. Maybe, by doing this, that is the reason why they can deal with adversity so efficiently, not letting the dire-ness of the situation knock their concentration out of line.

I walk off into the cold, stormy unknown with my head held high, staring down all the adversity in my life in the eyes.

Bring it on.