Here at Fieldston, failure is a bit of an anomaly. We are offered infinite opportunities for retakes, for extra credit, for extra help\u2013everybody around us is counting on our success. We think ourselves entitled to all the opportunities the world has to offer, loath as we may be to admit it. The world is our oyster, and not even a pandemic should get in our way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The college admissions process throws a bit of a wrench in this starry-eyed disposition. Rejection is a very legitimate possibility for Fieldston\u2019s seniors\u2013often for the very first time in our short, cushy lives. We are violently reminded that not everybody will love us. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a genuinely jarring shock to the system. \u201cWhen you\u2019re rejected,\u201d said a senior who chose to remain anonymous, \u201cit really hurts because you picked that school and started to envision your life there, and when you get rejected that means the college didn\u2019t agree. Obviously.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n After anywhere from four to 14 years of being told that we should trust ourselves, that if we follow our own hearts nobody can rightfully tell us no, <\/em>it hurts a great deal to be apparently told that we aren\u2019t enough. All at once, as almost-adults, we must face how cripplingly fragile our self-esteem may actually be. \u201cYeah, I know that I shouldn\u2019t take it personally,\u201d said another anonymous senior, \u201cbut it\u2019s really hard not to. It feels like I\u2019m not good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n College, especially, exists as a total status symbol within the mostly-liberal, mostly-bourgeois mostly-intellectual world of New York\u2019s independent schools. In the same way that, years ago, it was assumed without question that our mothers would marry and start families, that our grandfathers would serve in the army and their wives would cook and clean for them, it is assumed that we, the most educated and aware generation America\u2019s seen, will attend the country\u2019s finest universities once we graduate highschool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It feels like a betrayal to our generation and our privilege to fall short of any institution\u2019s standards\u2013those of us without acceptance letters this December in the wake of Early-Decision are left asking whether we\u2019ve wasted all the resources we\u2019ve been offered by our education and our money. Are we any more than what we\u2019ve been given?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Only time will tell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here at Fieldston, failure is a bit of an anomaly. We are offered infinite opportunities for retakes, for extra credit, for extra help\u2013everybody around us is counting on our success. We think ourselves entitled to all the opportunities the world has to offer, loath as we may be to admit it. The world is our oyster, and not even a pandemic should get in our way. The college admissions process throws a bit of a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[347,318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[337],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5110,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions\/5110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}