Dear Maco,
I was thinking back to our conversation yesterday and I
wanted to share my thoughts with you. I
believe that some of this is our fault.
In our effort to help get you into a good college, we have reduced
everything you are into a page full of accomplishments. And in doing so, you feel like all you are
meant to do is get awards, achieve good grades and test scores. But that is far from the truth. Maybe that is how things appear right now, as
you are trying to package yourself up as something a college might want. And because the application process is so
limited, it is hard to do much else. The
system has encouraged this type of thinking and we all fell into it and I’m
sorry that I did. I know that I have
projected my own college experience onto you, in that I always felt if I had
done a little more, or had the right connections I could have gone to
Georgetown, my “dream” school. I want
your dreams to come true, but sometimes the dreams we have are not always the
ones that come true. I have a wonderful
life in a beautiful town with a great husband, kids I adore and the best
friends in the world. It didn’t matter
where I went to school - I am still living a dream, just not the one I had when
I was 18.
Life is not about accomplishments or a good resume, or even
a lot of money. Life is about the
connections you have with other people.
It is important to be emotional and to be yourself. And to be vulnerable, even if that is
painful. Like I said, in order to find
who you are, sometimes you need to look at who you were and where you came
from.
You have always been mature for your age, you’ve always
engaged easily with adults, and they like you (sometimes more than kids your
own age). You were a beautiful baby and
child and you are a handsome teenager.
You are smart and wise and thoughtful.
You are the little boy who wanted to save his mother from the “older”
even if he didn’t know what older was.
You are the young man who put his arm around his mother during Sam’s
service because she was crying. You are
the friend who stayed with Aidan when his ex-girlfriend was having a party and
he was having a bad night. You are the
kid who made Nicole giggle time and again at our kitchen counter. You are the brother who stayed to support his
sister in her ski race even after he crashed in his own race. You are the friend who has driven lots of drunken
kids home from parties. You are the son
who made his dad a sculpture of his favorite tree. You
are the grandson who wrote a poem for his grandmother’s 70th
birthday in the back of a cramped ski team van.
These are the things that should be on your resume. These are the things that colleges should
care about. These are the things that
make you human, a good person, and ultimately successful in life. You are so much more than a ski racer, or a
student who got perfect grades. You are
a caring, passionate, curious, lovely teenager who is trying to navigate a
complicated and uncertain future in the best way he knows how. I am proud of everything you are, as well as
everything you have done and I love you so much. Mom
“A happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of,
chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who
poured their life into yours, and the difference you’ve made in the lives of
others.” Susan Meissner
No comments:
Post a Comment