<p>I didn’t do much my freshman through junior years of high school. I excused my mediocre grades (at a really, really intense prep school with 100 kids/class and most students going either ivy or standford, duke, amherst, tufts, etc) and lack of participation in ECs to the fact that I was intellectual and free spirited and spent all my time reading Nabakov and Milan Kundera in sunny parks. My vague plan was to go out to some school in California and just “be happy.” (I definetly wasn’t happy) The only class I ever really was engaged in was the second half of my US History class, which through some combination of primary sources and academic comparisons showed me a window of time I saw as weighty and important to understand and that understanding to the larger world. The summer after 11th grade, I was driving with my family to my grandparents house in Santa Fe and my father turned on John Kerry’s acceptance speech at the DNC and I found myself sobbing in the back seat of the car. My life was literally never the same after that moment. In my mind, there was a link in what he said between morality and hard work, like there were people in America who were suffering because of inept foreign policy and budget cuts to social programs and if the government and American political system worked hard enough, faced harsh realities of global warming, budget deficits, ethnic factions fostering insurgencies, etc. and worked to fix those problems instead of saying that they didn’t exist, it had the power to ease and abate real suffering. I simply had no excuse for laziness in the face of that realization, and senior year was a blur of being the lead in the fall play, working at a boutique, spending 35+ hours a week campaigning for Kerry (crying for a good half hour on my barren living room floor as he conceeded…) getting a 3.6 first semester and a 4.0 second semester, and not getting into any of the schools I wanted to go to (NYU and Boston College were my first choices) I ended up deciding on University of Vermont mainly because it was in New England and I love New England.<br>
Over the summer I interned at the ACLU with a bunch of Wash U law students (I’m from STL) and helped a professor at Wash U do historical research, while hostessing at night and teaching theatre at a daycamp to make money.
I’m a freshman at University of Vermont now majoring in political science and minoring in history. I got a 3.73 (A-) first semster with two intermediate level classes in history of US foreign relations and literary theory (neither class has ever allowed a freshman in it before) and am in the Political Science honors program and the Dean’s List. I took the new SAT and got Writing 730, Reading 740, Math 620. My SAT 2s were writing 780, Literature 720 and US History 620. I’m co-president of UVM College Democrats and am currently helping organize and coordinate a poverty confrence on campus (John Edwards is going to be our keynote speaker, I’m so excited), and I am one of four people heading the Students Taking Action Now: Darfur project to get the University to divest from companies that invest in Sudan. I intern for Senator Leahy (top Democrat in the Senate in case anyone doesn’t know… he also went to Georgetown law, if that matters at all) for twelve hours every week (they only take one a semster, and they’ve never had one younger than a junior before) The main project I’m doing there is working closely with the State Director (second in command, acts in teh Senators place when he’s in DC) with a renewable energy source proposal by a guy who used to work in the Clinton administration. Basically, I just do research and travel around with the SD to promote the program.
My Russian government professor from last semester is also my advisor and told me that I should transfer to a harder school a month into the first semester, and really, really likes me. I’ve written a lot for his class, and he has a good grasp of my stregthes, and has offered to write me (in his words) an “extrordinary” recommendation for my advsior recommendation. My history of foreign relations professor likes me a lot as well, (I ask interesting questions in class and actually do the reading…) and since he teaches an intermediate class, I think I will get the other rec from him. My international relations professor from last semseter (intro class of 100 students) knew my name by the end of the first week, I talked in class all the time, talked to him about international relations outside of class, etc) let me into his senior seminar political science class for this semester, which is the most advanced poli sci class in the school, and it’s the only class I’ve taken here which I really, really find interesting and engaging, even though about ten of the twenty students in the class (all seniors, all poli sci majors) don’t talk and don’t seem to take it seriously. My other classes this semester are an independent study with a published author who is also a prof. at UVM, the second half of my intermediate level history of foreign relations class, Intro to American Government and Statistics.
I know I can write good essays because there are specific programs and qualities about all the schools I’m applying to that I love (except Wash U and American), and I am visiting all the schools I’m applying to and contacting admissions reps. I am fairly certain that I want to be a campaign manager, but also have interest in foreign policy, so perhaps a foreign policy advsior to campaigns or cabinet member.
These are the schools I’m applying to:</p>
<p>Georgetown
Harvard
Barnard
NYU
American
Wash U (mother works there, tons of family has gone there, they know my high school, some building on campus named after my great uncle)</p>
<p>I guess my problem is I just… feel like I’ve gotten a little lost with all the work and striving. I can’t imagine ever going back to who I was before 12th grade, but I feel like I’m becoming one dimensional, and of the few people I’ve tried to talk to about it, none seem to understand what I’m saying. I’m also terrified I won’t get into the schools I want to go to (really only Harvard, Georgetown and Barnard) I can’t stand the thought of staying here. I’m not sure if the reason I feel like this is because I’m not a match at all for the social or intellectual or actual physical climate of Vermont or if it’s something more. I’m more of a black pants, heels, couple of nice drinks at a bar kind of girl than a revealing top frat party drink beer till you puke kind of girl, I love it when people have informed political opinions of either persuasion and care about politics and/or the larger world and I don’t find that here. I wish I knew people who did more than ski, watch TV, sleep, eat, and occasionally schlep over to classes. I’m the anomality because I care about my grades, the world, etc. Everything is ridiculously messy in the dorms, people are rude to service staff, cafeteria workers, people actually use racial and homophobic slurs here, this is almost zero diversity, ach, I’m dying.<br>
In trying to distance myself from it all as much as I can, I feel like I’ve almost become nothing but the peice of paper that I’m sending to these ad comms with all the hard work I’ve done that is hopefully going to get me away from this place. My parents don’t really understand this and just tell me to do what will make me happy, but what will make me happy is getting away from here and into an enviornment when I’m more in my element (I visited Georgetown in October and had the “this place is IT” moment right when I stepped on campus) and my heart literally ached when we had to pull away from Harvard after a weekend there for a Darfur confrence in December. I was wondering if any of your kids had gone through anything similar, if you had any advice, a litltle support… Thanks so much, I know this was a long and poorly focused post…</p>