Let the Indoctrination Begin

The woman-child, being this year a high school senior, is in the throes of college applications.

Back in the antewebian day when I was similarly throed, the process was limited to grades and SAT scores, which pretty much defined one's academic aspirations. Grades and scores were proxies to gain admission into colleges whose brand names were proxies in turn for entry into the world after industrialized education. My record strongly suggested I restrain my ambitions to those schools whose academic standards were friendly to those who could reliably fog a mirror.

Which makes a great deal of sense, when you think about it. The whole process, end-to-end, contained selection criteria chosen to yield a likelihood of success. Yes, legacy and money made their inevitable appearances. But put them off to the side: there were perfectly good reasons why Yale would have been exercising an instant of sanity by binning my application, should I have been so insane as to send one their direction in the first place.

My daughter, firmly ensconced in the upper 5% of her class, is not similarly constrained. And the application process seems also to have lost its moorings.

Besides the old standbys, grades and scores, there is now a small flotilla of essay questions with which to do battle:

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to address this challenge. Include whether you turned to anyone in facing the challenge, the role the person played, and what you learned about yourself.

Gosh. I am the child of two not same sex parents who have failed to not be amicably and persistently married. I have tried to get cancer, but it seems not to be contagious. Is it too late to get a heroin addiction?

Describe your experiences facing or witnessing discrimination. Tell us how you responded and what you learned from these experiences and how they have prepared you to contribute to the OSU community.

I'm short. Being a girl, I throw like a girl. I face discrimination every day because the basketball team refuses to embrace diversity, which doesn't make me feel good about myself.

Surely, OSU will not engage in tallist-throwist normative thinking when picking their starting center. I'm ready to contribute.

“Iconoclasts” is a Sundance Channel show that explores the intersection where two great talents meet. Each episode pairs two creative visionaries who discuss their lives, influences, and art. Examples: Quentin Tarantino and Fiona Apple; Madeleine Albright and Ashley Judd. The producer of the show has asked you to suggest a new pair. What two well-known, living individuals would you like to see paired in discussion? Why? What insights might emerge from their discussion?

Having labored through an episode, I learned the dictionary needs amending: apparently iconoclast is the word that means "someone who works in the entertainment industry, although it often isn't clear why". And that one of the acts that the Geneva convention must surely include as torture is sitting through one of these preening mutually congratulating tongue baths.

If the past is any guide, any two names I cough up need only satisfy the notoriety requirement. I'll go with the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Dennis the Menace. A producer that will green light Madeleine Albright and Ashley Judd will green light anything.

Food plays an important role in all of our lives. Food can reflect our values, beliefs, culture or ethnicity. Please provide an example of how food reflects one of these aspects in your life and explain why.

My family is half-British, which means we don't have an ethnicity; just ask the census bureau. As for values, beliefs and culture, they are apparently neatly tied up in negligent preparation and slapdash presentation. I am grateful for anything my dad cooks that isn't an immediate threat to my health.

Which is why, to avoid starvation -- that lesser well known role that food plays in our lives -- we have pizza delivered.

A lot.

Even though we aren't Italian, and, from what I have heard, it isn't, either.

Could be an American thing, although apparently that isn't an ethnicity. Can I get half-credit anyway?

Tell us about something that you have done on your own in the last two years that makes you feel good about yourself.

I am very uncomfortable with the harsh individualism implicit in this question. We are products of our community; therefore, we owe everything to our community. Life being what it is, I may not always feel good about myself. But, thanks to you and these questions, I will make any sacrifice, suffer any indignity, just so I never face the existential hell of working in college admissions.

The questions are real; the answers are just dad trying to help his little girl work her way through the perplexing folkways of academia.

Perhaps this is one time in her life when my daughter should look elsewhere for guidance.