Hype

"So what are you doing next year?"

I do my very best to never have favourites among the students I mentor, but I'm looking at the kid who I could probably reasonably call a backbone of the team. He's bright, he's humble, and he works as hard as anybody. He's also personally a sizable percentage of the manpower on the team despite the fact that he is only one of many students. He's blinking back tears.

"I...didn't get in."

"What?"

In the shop back in January I'm running lengths of wood through a table saw. High schoolers can't run this machinery themselves due to liability reasons so I do the cutting. The student is handing me marked pieces to cut and I'm flicking him the good portions I cut off.

"Is it hard to get into your school?" he asks me quietly.

"Not at all. They really haven't got any standards anymore, they're letting everybody in."

The kid visibly brightens, "Do you think I'll get in?"

"Oh absolutely."

I remember the topic coming up at nearly every practice for the next two weeks. Apparently this kid dreamed of my university and thought of it pretty constantly. I told him it would get it for sure, and even at times encouraged him to apply to another school or two that was more difficult than my own, just so he could push himself and maybe luck out at a place with a better endowment and thus better financial aid. I acted like it was inconceivable that he wouldn't be admitted. I remember giving a few seniors as a group the "These things are all done by humans and you must always do your best, but sometimes after that its just luck what happens" speech but I did not think to impress on the kid that my school was like that too and even though he should get in easily accidents do happen. The honest-to-God reason for this is that it was simply inconceivable in my mind that I had ever been admitted to this place and that he wouldn't be. His GPA blew mine out of the water, his SAT scores were comparable (converted back of course, when I was in high school we had no written third portion), and over the span of three years, according to his story, he had taught himself all of his English after immigrating from a chunk of the ex USSR. He speaks beautifully now. He came from a poor neighborhood in a bad part of the city and went to a rough school. He had a perfectly clean disciplinary record, and I don't see how an admissions director wouldn't just love him in an interview. This kid was the living embodiment in my mind of the American Dream. I'm more proud of him than I can tell you.

Its May again. The kid's looking at the brick walkway we're standing on because he doesn't want to be seen crying. I don't blame him. I pretend to not notice the intermittent sniffles because that's what he wants.

The campus is beautiful this time of year. The whole of it is green and alive, and the flower buds haven't quite dropped from the trees yet but the leaves have grown. The have a light green vibrancy to them not yet baked off by the constant days of sunshine into a darker green. Behind him some college kids play frisbee barefoot. The sky overhead is blue and the air is warm. Its days like today they really ought to put on the postcards and admission brochures.

"This place is pretty nice," he says.

I nod. When a kid wants to change a topic at a time like this you don't press it. There is an uncomfortable silence for a few minutes before an adult who works at his school asks "so where are you going?"

The kid names a school that's basically a community college. No, he hasn't applied there yet. I remind him that the consortium permits him to take as many classes as he wants from my school for no extra charge if he attends that school. Am I being foolish acting like he could transfer over no problem? I still don't see why he couldn't, but I also don't see how he didn't get in in the first place.

"I have been bad," he says. "I haven't always given this my 100 percent. I deserve this."

He says he slacked, but his GPA is good. Maybe they knock it down a few more rungs because of the school he attended? Still, I do not get it. I bring him to one of my professors and ask him to explain the transfer in program.

"And he can still do it in four years right?" I ask after introducing them.

"Yes," my professor says, "If he works hard."

"Can I double major?"

The prof looks at him somewhat incredulously. "That's a lot of work son."

My blood boiled. Of course he could double major. This kid is very talented, and if he had just been admitted with the rest of the spoiled bratty freshman class he could do it no problem. Now he faces two years of condescension as he tries to transfer in here, only to probably be ultimately robbed of his chance to double major.

I remember sitting in a lecture hall of a large university as a junior in high school.

"Are you need blind?" a mother asks.

The presenter looks nervous, "No school is really 100% need blind, we have limited scholarship funds."

I'm poor, but on paper my family doesn't look as poor as this kid's, not by a long shot. This kid would need nearly a full ride, he would have to commute all four years because he couldn't afford dorm space. A white male commuter student at a school which is trying to increase its school spirit and the cohesiveness of the freshmen body, and they probably had a high number of drop-outs of kids in this kid's profile.

I don't even want to write that here. I don't want to believe that could possibly be what held this kid back. Its completely disgusting. This kid is a self-made-man, he knows what he wants to do with his life, and he needs this degree to do it legally speaking. He knows the meaning of hard work, and he's dedicated to his cause. That alone blows 95% of freshmen out of the water.

The adult who works at this kid's school keeps pressing for information. "How many other schools did you apply to?"

Apparently only one. He got rejected from that too.

"How did your interview here go? Did you remember to dress up for it?"

The kid looked surprised, "They have interviews?"

She's frustrated now. "Who helped you with your admission applications?"

The kid seemed uneasy, "nobody helped me, I figured it out..."

"These things have a lot of unwritten rules to them," I said, "we would have helped you. You realize that's why I'm here right? I want to help you guys."

"And now that we know, we're going to do everything we can to help you," the other mentor said.

The kid looked up from the bricks and grinned. Those are the smiles you live for, when a kid finally gets that somebody in the world gives a fuck.

The soda can girl and I were sitting out at dusk for a moment taking a small break. The other kid was inside.

"He didn't seriously get rejected from here did he? I thought you said he would get in for sure."

I wince, embarrassed that his peers caught wind of my completely unwaivering confidence in this kid and how it hadn't quite panned out.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm not sure what happened. He must have mailed his application in late or something."

"You should ask him," she said.

"I don't think that will make his situation better right now."

I'm still so proud of this kid. I hope some day he believes me about that. I still believe he'll do great things someday, he just has a much harder road than most. I haven't got any way to say that to him without shouldering him with further expectations, but I wish I did. I wish I could give him the confidence to try again and to move forward. I wish I'd known nobody was overseeing his applications. I wish a lot of things, but mostly I just want him to know that we're not disappointed in him at all. He's still the same talented kid in my eyes, regardless of what some dumbass admission department says.

Also, I'm totally making college admissions of my students my business next year.