<p>My youngest just finished hearing from colleges and is making decisions among happy choices. 10 years ago I found CC when I Googled Grinnell-Oberlin as her brother was making a similar decision. Now he is working following grad school, son #2 is finishing law school in May (with a clerkship followed by a job all set) and their baby sister will be off to college in the fall.</p>
<p>With #1 and 2 things were pretty straightforwards in HS and there was no reason to think #3 would not follow suit, but she did not. She had a very difficult start to HS and ended up in a therapeutic boarding school for a while which changed her life. She is now an incredibly accomplished and insightful girl. She managed her college search with her guidance counsellor all by herself. I wrote checks and drove her to visit some schools. I remember the tension and stress of #1&2 and this time was a breeze. She took the SAT’s once and applied to a large # of Fairtest Schools which seemed to love her untraditional HS experience, and mostly what she knows about herself. Other non-Fairtest Schools didn’t seem too fussed about her mediocre SAT’s either! </p>
<p>She wrote this poem after a recent trip to the Himalayas with her school. She doesn’t have a list of Ivy League acceptances. She has something so much more important, in fact. So, as she is my youngest, this will be our family’s last contribution to CC. Thanks to all for the ideas and support!!!</p>
<p>The Rain in the Mountains:</p>
<p>If you had asked me
only five years ago,
what imagined my life to be,
I would not have said:
“Like the rain in the mountains.”</p>
<p>I probably would have shrugged.
Tucked my head into my shoulders,
as if I were a turtle.
Then simply stated
“Nothing spectacular.”</p>
<p>The idea that I could be anything more
than a dot in a pointillist painting,
seemed like a fairy tale meant for someone
far more “spectacular”
than me.</p>
<p>But here I am.</p>
<p>I have found my true north.
I have reached beyond the stars.
I’ve even spent time amongst the Dragons,
atop vast oceans, and driest deserts.</p>
<p>Yet the thing I feel
Most encompasses this journey,
so perfectly,
is the rain in the mountains.</p>
<p>In a place so cold and so barren
I expected only the frigid, bitter snow.</p>
<p>And yet here it is.
The impossible rain,
on the impossible mountains.</p>
<p>Though it logically makes sense that it could rain so far up,
Part of me believed it never would.</p>
<p>Yet here it is.
And here I am. </p>
</p>