OK so the whole nation just admires the hell out of this Ghanaian kid who got into ALL the Ivy League schools, although my first reaction is that it seems kind of vulgar and over the top to apply to all of them but whatever. Then after the various encomia comes a meme with a reprint of his essay. Now rather than blasting off on this right away I thought, hold your pants there boy-o, see if this still rankles after a few days pass..... Well you know me Al. There it sits in my notebook ( Jim Lewis, are you paying attention?): All this blind admiration of the kid who got into all the Ivies. His essay. Eichmann. But Jim, leaving aside for now my exaggerated fear of people who, with real and prideful mastery, give the society exactly what it wants, without a trace of rational consideration of whether what the society wants is good or not, believing that having done so well at giving the society what it wants they are not morally responsible for the actions entailed -- putting that aside -- I do think that the Ghanaian kid story with his essay, which is a flat, banal pastiche of every admissions brochure cliche ever written, i.e., creative problem solving leadership etc, puts the lie once and for all to the entire industrys claim (and it is now an industry) that the college admissions people care about who you are as a distinct individual. The process is clearly a loose algorithm working with two factors (in need blind schools; in others, ability to pay is a third) -- demographics and scores. Meanwhile, the kid seems like a good kid. And no doubt not many of these high-pressure, present-yourself, 18-year-olds essays are much better than his, which does brim with a headache-inducing optimism. But what are the chances, given the rewards already received and the enticements yet to come, pulling him in the other direction, that he becomes, in the most radical and difficult sense, an individual?
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 03:21:02 +0000
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