Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Usually, there wasn’t much to take from the “Few Details” section. Occasionally, something unusual was worth writing down.
In the section of the reader’s card marked “FD,” she wrote: “
Sunday Bloody Sunday
,” but mostly because she enjoyed thinking that Corinne would not know what it meant.
Now, and only now, it was time to read the essays.
For his longer essay, Jeremiah had chosen one of the most popular prompts, an Einstein quote: “The important thing is not
to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries
of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this
mystery every day.” (Albert Einstein, Princeton resident 1933–1955)
She leaned over the page, awkwardly aware of how good she wanted it to be.
I became an autodidact at eight years old, when I realized that my teachers were not going to be able to teach me. It wasn’t
that they were unequal to the task of teaching me—they weren’t. And it wasn’t that they didn’t wish to teach me. I think they
wished to very much. But they were busy. They needed to keep order, muster the slower ones, persuade various second graders
to stop biting, pulling hair, and doing disgusting things with their body fluids. I think I spent most of that year
waiting
to learn, but I finally figured out that I could be putting that time to better use. So I set off, without much direction.
I read biographies, mainly, because I had no idea how other people had lived their lives. When biographies led me into different
disciplines, I followed them until my interests shifted, but I always picked up the thread with a new life story. I never
bothered to devise a master plan. I had no concept of a master plan. What I was doing was almost hedonistic. It certainly
was not disciplined. It has continued now for ten years.
All this time, of course, I was in school, but just barely. I’m sure it does not reflect well on me when I say that my high
school classes, in the main, did not interest me, so I mostly ignored them, sometimes scraping by with passing grades, sometimes
not. My high school, Keene Central, tried various methods to bring me into the fold. I was threatened with detention, which
was fine with me because it was a quiet place to read, and suspension, which was even better since my parents both worked
during the day, which meant that I could read in comfort, at home. I was told that I would be held back to repeat tenth grade,
then eleventh grade, but to me, additional years of school meant additional years when I would not have to support myself,
when I could simply continue on as I had been. Still, I believed that my guidance counselor meant well, and I regularly promised
to mend my ways, but it always had to be after I finished the next book, and then the book after that.
Then, last spring I had a chance meeting with a teacher from a new private school, not far from Keene. On his advice, I registered
to take AP tests in some subjects that were interesting to me. I also took the SAT a few weeks later and did all right on
the verbal part, but I should have reviewed the math before I took it. Most important, though, was that I persuaded my parents
to let me leave Keene Central. (It was difficult to persuade them, but not at all difficult to persuade Keene Central!) In
the past few months I have spent at Quest, I have at long last learned to bend my pursuits into some thematic shape, to make
links between ideas, to consider opposing ideas in a critical way. I have also developed the long overdue discipline to complete
assignments, prepare for tests, and meet deadlines. For the first time, I feel an immense exhilaration about where all of
this may be going, and what it has been for. Of course, it is frustrating to think about how things might have been different
if I had been exposed much earlier to this kind of guidance, but it should also be said that I never thought of going to college
until I began studying at Quest, so now, perhaps, my education may be extended and deepened in this new direction.
The sum total of all I’ve learned is that I don’t know anything, really, only little pieces of things. I haven’t been anywhere
except for a few trips to family in Watertown, mainly because my parents aren’t wealthy but also because they are settled
people who don’t like to travel. I haven’t had any interesting jobs, but I do work during the summer at the supermarket where
my parents are employed. Mostly, what I do is read. Right now, my interests are the architecture of early cities, the Ottoman
Empire, George Sand, Sojourner Truth, and contemporary Japanese fiction (in translation, unfortunately; another shortcoming
I would like to rectify). Earlier this fall I immersed myself in American Pop Art, with particular reference to Warhol and
Lichtenstein. If I am accepted to college, I would like to delve deeper into art and architecture, European literature, Eastern
religions, and the history of medicine. I would also like to continue with Latin, which was not offered at Keene Central,
and which I was only able to begin this fall, and especially philosophy. I have left the question of possible future plans
unanswered, because there are too many things I would need to find out first. Thank you very much for your time.
All right, she thought, relieved. So it was good. But the problems were glaring. By his own admission, he had ignored his
classes, declined to follow the curriculum, and resisted guidance from teachers and administrators. Clearly, failure did not
perturb him. What did? She considered for a long moment before writing, in the space allotted for Essay #1: “Autodidact since
age 8. Has not done well in school but has read incessantly, esp. biographies. Clearly values education over academic ‘success.’
Complex picture here. Fine writer.”
His second essay:
I discovered early on that I was not at all interested in the practical side of mathematics (for example, in the problem solving
that anyone who wants to use math for science or engineering needs to know). What I did care about were questions like: How
we can
know
that 2+2=4? And that’s not so much a mathematical question as a philosophical question. Actually, it’s no different from
other questions about the basic sources of our knowledge: How do we
know
that it’s wrong to cause pain? How do I
know
that something I’m observing is actually happening? In all of these cases, we have knowledge of a fact that doesn’t derive
from ordinary sense perception. So how is that possible?
For a while, I did make an effort to follow the math curriculum in school, but I knew that I was always gravitating toward
things that weren’t really central to the class material. When we studied geometry, for instance, we were taught Euclid’s
axioms and postulates. The textbook mentioned that one of the postulates was controversial—given a line, exactly one line
parallel to the original can be drawn through any given point—and that it might even be false “for our world.” This was baffling
to me: mathematics is supposed to be certain! If this axiom is wrong, how do we know that others aren’t wrong? And if the
others might be wrong, how can we claim to know anything in geometry, or in any other part of mathematics? I actually departed
the curriculum completely at this point, and started reading philosophy on my own, which is exactly what I was doing when
I was busy getting that D in eleventh grade math.
Since then, I’ve noticed that, in other classes, I tend to get stuck on questions that are raised in the very first chapter
of the textbook: What is life? (in biology). What is a poem? (in English). What is the past? (in history). To be honest, I’ve
never understood how people get beyond those questions to what comes later. It’s not that I’m not interested in what comes
later: I’m very interested! But I just haven’t been able to get there on my own. Of course, I realize now that my unwillingness
to play by the rules in my classes is going to end up hurting me, probably in ways I never considered when I was blowing off
my homework. I wish I could go back and make a different decision, but if I could do that, I’d probably know so much math
and physics that college would be a little redundant. So instead, I’m just going to hope it all works out for the best.
If she were in a different frame of mind, Portia thought, she might note the fact that the two essays were not very dissimilar.
She liked, in general, for an applicant to take these two opportunities to show distinct facets of themselves: scholarly and
personal, scholarly and musical, scholarly and socially conscious. But Jeremiah, she was getting the impression, was not particularly
multifaceted. This—this avid, self-directed scholarship—was what he was, and all he was. There had been little development
of a self, which was of course not all that unusual for the age group. But Jeremiah was a consumer of information and ideas.
It was the most real, possibly the only real, focus in his life. This would hardly make him a hit in the eating clubs, but
on the other hand, Princeton was one of the few universities where the Jeremiahs of the world could fruitfully congregate.
He should be here, probably, where he could meet his peers and be properly nurtured.
In the comment space for the second essay, she wrote: “Following his own curriculum in math/philosophy. Not interested in
applied math but ‘gets stuck’ on big questions. Reading far ahead even as he acknowledges underperforming in class. Again,
strong writer.”
She read what she had written and frowned. Lemonade from lemons, certainly. But lemons in abundance.
The secondary school report from Keene Central, which came next in the file, was a definite cold shower. She’d known what
was coming because of the tally on the reader’s card, but the transcript itself was still a blow, the very picture of a checked-out
student. His highest grades, B’s, had been earned in history and English; his lowest, mainly D’s, in math and science. The
cumulative picture of these two extremely important years of high school implied that Jeremiah didn’t even belong in the pool,
let alone in the class. With a sinking feeling, she turned to the brief letter by his former guidance counselor, a Burton
McNulty:
I was surprised to learn that Jeremiah had decided to go to college, because even though I tried to motivate him to do just
that while he was at Keene Central, the fact is he never seemed to care about what he was going to do after high school. Jeremiah’s
main goal in life, in my view, was to be left alone. He hated to be reminded that he wouldn’t pass English if he didn’t turn
in his paper, or he wouldn’t pass math if he didn’t sit for the final. Of course, we have had many, many students over the
years who fit that description, but what was so frustrating about Jeremiah was how smart he clearly was. If only he’d applied
himself, he could have been at the very top of our class, not languishing in the bottom with kids who weren’t going anywhere
in life. Time and again I sat him down and told him he needed to get himself together, that it would be an awful shame to
waste what he had, and I thought I’d gotten through to him more than once, but then I’d get the final reports from his teachers
and see he’d failed to complete assignments and skipped tests. Sometimes they really didn’t want to fail him because they
recognized his potential, but they were obligated to because of the missing papers and test scores. I can tell you that a
couple of those D’s and low C’s actually should have been failing grades, but the teachers just couldn’t bring themselves
to do it.
Jeremiah is a very nice young man, and I can’t help but believe that we failed him here. I wish I had known what to say to
him or how to help him, but I just came up short again and again. If the teachers at his new school were able to do something
with him, then I’m very pleased. As for college, I’m a bit at a loss about what to tell you. Perhaps college will bring something
out of him that high school could not. Can he do the work at a place like Princeton? Well, he’s smart enough, obviously. But
WILL he do the work? I just don’t know. I wish only the best for him and I would love to see him succeed.
Portia, tapping her pen, read the recommendation through again, trying to spin it. This was, to say the least, an unusual
letter for a Princeton applicant. Princeton applicants were typically the pride of their schools, the one in a decade for
grievously overburdened counselors at massive public schools, or just the fine young men and women that private schools with
long Princeton connections existed to produce. Every now and then, of course, as in the case of the morally deficient Sean
Aronson, there might be a whiff of ambivalence rising from a letter of reference, a sotto voce implication that, while this
was certainly a swell kid, the admissions officer reading this letter might be encouraged to look elsewhere on the list of
applicants from this particular school. And though she had many times encountered students whose guidance counselors believed
them to be underachievers, she could never recall a gap as big as this one. “Johnny could have been valedictorian if he had
not devoted so much training time to track.” “Lori might have ranked much higher if she were not so fully committed to her
church activities.” But Jeremiah had not thrived in high school at all, and without the excuse of extracurricular passions.
He had been too busy reading. He had not cared to succeed.
She was a little surprised to find herself as engaged as she was. On the face of it, this application was not a difficult
call. Was it fair, after all, to take a place from a kid who had worked his heart out—more accurately, to take it from roughly
nine
kids who had worked their hearts out—and give it to a kid who hadn’t even tried to toe the line? Jeremiah, for all his potential,
had not looked up from his books long enough to seek guidance that was his for the asking. There were abundant opportunities
for smart kids, after all, even smart kids who happened to be poor and had parents who did not like to travel. A little research,
a little initiative, and he might have found his way to CTY or one of the other academic programs with scholarships at the
ready. He might have corresponded with the authors of some of the books he’d read, at least one of whom might have extended
himself or herself to such a brilliant young person. Jeremiah had not availed himself of community college courses, as so
many Princeton applicants did, nor had he made any effort to move himself out of a learning environment that had so obviously
been inadequate to his needs. The picture he presented was immensely frustrating. But she couldn’t, somehow, quell her own
intrigued attention to him.