Re:Ask HN: High school senior, deferred from Harvard. Advice?
by Mz on Thursday December 13, 2012 @10:05PM
(#4919397)
Long ago, in a galaxy far away: I was accepted to UGA (which is a big deal in hicksville) with a National Merit Scholarship. I also was offered the chance to apply for a fellowship, but I missed the deadline. (My dream college was St. John's in New Mexico but I didn't have the foreign language classes to get accepted.)
I went up to UGA by bus for orientation and wandered around on foot on a Sunday trying to find something to eat while feeling awful. As the day wore on, I felt worse and worse. By the end of the day, I just felt really dreadful and I just wanted to leave. I called my sister who kindly drove up to get me. I gave up my scholarship, attended a local college, married, dropped out of school. I had kids and was a homemaker for a long time.
Many years later, after a lot more mysterious health issues, I was told I had a deadly disorder. Looking back on it, had I gone to UGA (or St. John's) and pursued a career, I likely would have died young, one of those headlines that says something like "Promising youth dies mysteriously". The social isolation of being home wth my kids likely helped me stay relatively healthy for longer. My preference would have been "social butterfly". And it likely would have helped to kill me.
I am not religious and I don't think you have to believe in some sort of god to find a logical explanation for the detour I took. I didn't have a diagnosis but I also didn't feel well that fateful day at orientation when I decided "I just want to go home". So let me suggest that if you fail to get into Harvard, perhaps the message is that it isn't the best fit for you. Forcing it might do more harm than good.
I am more inclined these days to accept seeming roadblocks as constructive feedback: Either step up my game so I can get past it without forcing it or accept that it is probably for the best that I not go there. I suggest you get cracking on something else. It would be a shame to let a lot of other doors close because you wasted too much time on disappointment.
I went up to UGA by bus for orientation and wandered around on foot on a Sunday trying to find something to eat while feeling awful. As the day wore on, I felt worse and worse. By the end of the day, I just felt really dreadful and I just wanted to leave. I called my sister who kindly drove up to get me. I gave up my scholarship, attended a local college, married, dropped out of school. I had kids and was a homemaker for a long time.
Many years later, after a lot more mysterious health issues, I was told I had a deadly disorder. Looking back on it, had I gone to UGA (or St. John's) and pursued a career, I likely would have died young, one of those headlines that says something like "Promising youth dies mysteriously". The social isolation of being home wth my kids likely helped me stay relatively healthy for longer. My preference would have been "social butterfly". And it likely would have helped to kill me.
I am not religious and I don't think you have to believe in some sort of god to find a logical explanation for the detour I took. I didn't have a diagnosis but I also didn't feel well that fateful day at orientation when I decided "I just want to go home". So let me suggest that if you fail to get into Harvard, perhaps the message is that it isn't the best fit for you. Forcing it might do more harm than good.
I am more inclined these days to accept seeming roadblocks as constructive feedback: Either step up my game so I can get past it without forcing it or accept that it is probably for the best that I not go there. I suggest you get cracking on something else. It would be a shame to let a lot of other doors close because you wasted too much time on disappointment.