To the Admissions Committee:
As the gatekeepers of your fine
university's selection process, you are probably asking yourselves, "Why
in hell should we even consider the application of Adam Harper Steinem Mandela
Kellowitch-Frane?" My answer? "Let's find out together."
From my earliest childhood, all
I've ever wanted was to attend either an Ivy League school, a still respectably
expensive party school, or a so-called safety school, where the standards are
so low that I'd be a shoo-in, and which my parents could tell their friends was
"a better fit." Although, of course, as a biracial child, I wasn't
sure if higher education would even be an option for me. And, when I say
biracial, I mean that my father went to Harvard and my mother attended Oberlin.
When I was young, this situation tore me apart, because I never knew which
world I belonged in. Should I follow my dad and become hugely successful and
condescending to everyone, or should I dream of becoming every bit as creative
yet talentless as my mom? I still don't know the answer, but maybe not knowing
is my greatest strength.
When I was twelve, I first became
aware of the world's suffering, and I used the dividends from my trust fund to
fly to Berlin to help the victims of the recent tsunami. Upon my arrival, I
discovered that, while the tsunami hadn't affected Berlin, I could still
express my empathy for the victims by joining an activist performance troupe
and mounting a piece entitled "Younami: The Superstorm Inside Us
All."
Upon my return to the States, I was
accepted as a legacy to the prestigious St. Callowmere Academy, where I pursued
my passionate yet quirky interests in designing chairs without legs for people
who'd rather sit on the floor; developing alternative fuels, including my rage
at my stepmother; and writing, directing, and starring in a Web series about my
dorm room (inspired by my unpublished graphic novel about the mouse who lived
in my desert boots). I have also volunteered as a tutor, helping public-school
children learn to lie about it, and to stop already with the colorful
backpacks, because it's a dead-ass giveaway. I have also excelled at lacrosse,
wakeboarding, and riding the subway while thinking, Look at me, I'm riding the
subway!
But all this was just a prelude to
meeting a very special person, who changed not only my life but my perspective
on humanity. He was someone I'd seen every day but had never focussed on, until
I came home late one night from this amazing club in Bushwick, which was really
more of an opium den with banjos and decent frittatas. When I got back to our
building, I had to be carried out of the Uber car by the guy I'm talking about,
although I'd never said more to him than a casual "Hey" or "Are
you the new one?" His name was Patrick, and he's one of our doormen.
That night, once Patrick had helped
me stumble up to our penthouse and had brewed me a perfectly acceptable cup of
whatever Cuban-Laotian blend Fresh Direct had delivered, we started to talk,
and a new world opened up. Patrick had come to this country many years ago,
from a place he called "somewhere else," by which I assumed he meant
a much lower floor in our building. Patrick also told me that he'd always
dreamed of wearing a fine uniform and signing for mysterious packages that had
been Fed Exed to what he called "impressive young people like
yourself" and then, later, "telling the detective everything I could
remember." Then he laughed and asked if l'd like to hear a story, and even
though I'd already clamped on my headphones and was lost in my tunes, I nodded:
whatevs.
"I was once a boy just like
you," Patrick began, "and everyone kept telling me that I should go
to college. So I applied everywhere, and I was accepted at Yale, Harvard, and
Princeton, although I was waitlisted at Stanford, because I'd made the mistake
of combing my hair for the application photo. So I decided to spend one year at
each school I'd got into, and then pick the place I liked best to graduate
from. Things were going just fine, and I was meeting many kinds of people, all
wearing moccasins and Shetland sweaters with holes in them, although the young
ladies often added pearls and bits of canned frosting around their mouths. I
studied pre-law and pre-med and business, and also Persian enamels, the
evolution of the Iberian ribbed newt, and the films of Sandra Bullock. But
then, after those three years, I dropped out and crowdfunded a startup called
SnitSnot.com, for people who want to send photos of the beer they're drinking,
along with their net worth, scrawled across the chest of a fashion model, to
everyone within a five-block radius. I sold this app for $2.8 billion, and I
used the money to buy a private island in the Pacific. I surrounded myself with
the planet's foremost artists and economists and scientists, and, just as we
were about to unlock the secret of a peaceful and happy world, I thought, You
know, I really wish I were standing in the sleeting rain, helping kids with too
many names to drag their duffelbags filled with smelly laundry into the
elevator. So here I am."
Of course, I never spoke to Patrick
again. But his words meant so much to me, because I knew that I could include
them in this essay, which would make me stand out among all the other kids with
perfect S.A.T. scores and Arizona rock-climbing epiphanies, or siblings who'd
died in their arms. So, please, Admissions Committee, don't you need someone
like me, someone who hired a bitter thirty-eight-year-old with a useless
doctorate in English literature to write this essay for him? An essay that I,
Adam Harper Steinem Mandela Kellowitch-Frane, have never even bothered to read?
Fingers crossed,
An Incoming Freshman!!!
