<p>if those lines are funny, obviously the bar’s pretty low. Sorry, I know some really funny people, I read some really funny people, and i think her jokes are lame, but they speak to people who kinda feel the same way. </p>
<p>However, her strategy to rip up others and then add the “just kidding” angle is certainly a winner.</p>
<p>The season of unfairness…
College acceptance is not necessarily a meritocracy. Getting a job is not a meritocracy. Advancing in a job/career is not a meritocracy. I was shocked to learn in my early 20s that promotion and advancement is not meritocracy based; instead it seemed to be based on connections, who liked working with whom, self-promotion, and other things. I felt like I was told a bunch of fables.</p>
<p>Parents should stop pretending that life is a meritocracy.
Why do we continue to perpetuate this myth to our children?</p>
<p>the thing is, I actually don’t “feel the same way” as she does. But, I think she is funny.
quite frankly, I know she is funny.</p>
<p>Humor is offensive, almost always. There are massive amounts of academic research on this. You almost can’t be funny without being offensive. To some group or other.</p>
<p>At any rate, by the time our kids are our age, the united states will no longer have a white majority. We will be the first industrialized nation to have a minority majority, and Hispanics and Whites will be close to one another, population wise, though African Americans will be closer in numbers to Asians than either whites or Hispanics. </p>
<p>I think next year, or the one after? The majority of babies born in the United States will be of what is called minority status, which should make college admissions interesting in 18 years or so.</p>
<p>This op ed is a snapshot of what one girl felt this year. It will be a relic by the time her kids apply to school.</p>
<p>I sincerely hope our kids can learn to joke around with each other a bit. Otherwise, it’s going to be very, very tense around this country, particularly since there is every indication that the Supreme court is about to tell state schools they can no longer use race in admissions.</p>
<p>ETA: The thing she should really have noted is the number of kids being accepted ED this year almost everywhere. Now THAT is just astonishing, imho.</p>
<p>Much good humor is offensive. Much isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that all that is offensive is funny–I’m a fan of humor that skewers up, not down–the latter shades to mean way too easily. But regardless; I don’t see her as particularly offfensive; she’s too lightweight for that. </p>
<p>Maybe the difference here is that it sounds like you all live in towns where stereotypical kids play all those games she describes, so you think those are the only kids who get into selective schools. But in the rest of the world, outside of UMC-ville, regular kids really do be their (best) selves (not their sitting doing nothing selves) and do get into really good schools. I actually believe that this whole mantra of the charity-making-up, over-prepped, five athlete bogey-student is the myth the privileged make up to explain why their own privilege isn’t being rewarded.</p>
<p>But of course, her privilege, of being born in the right family, has been amply rewarded!</p>
<p>Haha, I liked it. I think it was cute and entertaining. The article didn’t come off as whiny to me mostly because she poked fun at herself too.
And anyway, we all know she had a point about the whole diversity thing.</p>
<p>I find this girl, along with other bratty children who feel the same way, to be pathetic.
Reeks of “mommy told me I’m a special snowflake so I deserve more.” </p>
<p>You exemplify the problem with such humorous, offensive, trivial, deep-thinking, or whatever adjective someone will qualify that OP with. It is what it is. Again, some will see it as brilliant and others as pure BS. </p>
<p>But, no, she does not have a point, and no, not all of us agree or know she might have a point. What some of us know is that she is just a clueless and pathetically ignorant teenager who did what such teenagers do. And, if she is actually not that clueless or ignorant, her decision to contribute THAT piece to a journal indicates quite the opposite.</p>
<p>And it is a problem when someone elevates that little piece of trivial and irrelevant prose, as something more than pure drivel.</p>
<p>there’s every reason to practice diversity admissions. I’m very pleased when I see this, personally.</p>
<p>There is no reason to pretend that diversity admissions isn’t going on. I like the approach Stanford is thinking of taking where they flat out state what they are doing so that it is out there, so that they get to continue to choose in the way that they want to choose.</p>
<p>But, if we don’t talk about it, if the kids don’t talk about it, in the immature way that kids talk about these things? We will be in bigger trouble than just in admissions.</p>
<p>She is opening our minds to not one thing. That is not the point. You guys are cracking me up, at this point. Really. You are.</p>
<p>Plus, she wouldn’t have gotten in as a diversity admit, anyway. it’s not “easy” to get in as a URM, anyway. Plenty of really credentialed URMs are not getting into the Ivies, these days, and I sincerely hope they are getting advised correctly on this issue by their GCs.</p>
<p>Poetgrl, ad hominems aside, why is it someone can’t just think this is, uh, dumb, without all the contempt here?</p>
<p>Isn’t it possible to not agree on her cleverness without getting walloped with snark? </p>
<p>Her jokes sounded like any typical HS harhar griping. i’m sure your kids or most other posters kids are that funny much of the time. Or more so.</p>
<p>My interpretation was that the author was in fact, spouting pure BS, on purpose. That was the humor. It wasn’t brilliant, it was quite simplistic but poignant, I thought, for a teenager not brilliant enough to get in anywhere amazing. It was her acknowledgement that all the excuses for not getting in are BS cliches, and she rattled them off, one after another to simulate making herself feel better, then went back to her predictable cliche privileged life of watching Housewives. She was poking fun at herself, while letting us know by her final action that she really is <em>not</em> special.</p>
<p>Anyway, I liked it way better than the chicken nuggets essay, which I thought was just dumb and immature. Some people went to great lengths to try to convince me that that one was funny, but I never felt it. Humor is in the eye of the beholder, obviously.</p>
<p>wow–this thread kinda blew up a little bit! LOL</p>
<p>poetgrl: we’re ALREADY in big trouble (inside and outside of the world of college admissions–that’s sort of the point). or haven’t you noticed…?</p>
<p>garland: thanks for the link. that sort of pushback is important.</p>