the Sam Jackson College Experience

So I’m leaving on a jet plane to go start my internship for the spring trimester in Washington, D.C. in John Kerry’s office. Should get into National a bit after lunch time, then it’s off to the Capitol Hill Suites Hotel. I will hopefully be finishing up these much-awaited pre-regular admissions blog posts in a short while. No homework, after all… just fun learning experiences!

Still packing, actually. Yikes.

Hey all! I know I haven’t been posting very much recently, so take this question in the context of your entire relationship with this website. Sometimes I’ll get into a posting spree and I worry that some posts get buried beneath others, never to be seen again. I can get a rough answer to this question with my google analytics and Feedburner data, but I would be interested in hearing reader responses directly, too. Then again, poll results will be coming from people who check relatively frequently… funny, right?

{democracy:2}

RSS readers, if this javascript poll doesn’t work for you, please click through.

Those bullets are annoying but I decided that rather than properly style the poll I would throw it up now and correct things later. We’re experimenting.

Fun fact: I checked today for the first time in weeks to discover that my RSS subscriber pool is now over a hundred and has been for the last month or so. Wow! Thanks for reading, guys. Or rather… subscribing to nothing. Either way, cool.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is tackling her first college visits over this spring break–a junior–and she e-mailed me an interesting question, here reproduced.

oh yeah, and i’m checking out columbia on wednesday. the whole process had made me more nervous about figuring out what i want to do with my life than worried about getting into college. >.< did it have that effect on you?

My reply? Here we are, advice that I think many I see panicking could take to heart before fretting too much about their future lives as brainwashed investment bankers.

If you get yourself too concerned with long term ‘tracking’ type planning then you might work yourself up into a terrible mess. For me, I looked at it a certain way–if I had a balanced list, it would be very unlikely that I wouldn’t go -somewhere- and wherever I went I knew I could do my best to use the resources there to explore what I might want to do later. That’s the best way to look at things so as to not go crazy, I think. I’m not going to lie and say that I was near 100% successful with that strategy but it was something of a guiding principle… if you throw in a healthy dose of delusion well then you’re set. Garnish with insecurities and malcontent and serve piping hot.

Can you identify why it has made you nervous? The college application process, and college search, can be quite eye-opening when you see how open-ended things can be. This is America, after all, not the U.K. or something. Unless say you’re applying to some esoteric school for one specific program (which I don’t recall you as ever having mentioned being your intent, given the sizes you were talking about) you’ll find that a wide range of strong offerings will keep your possibilities very open indeed. So be happy about that, it’s a land of possibility even if it is also a land of unknowns and unforeseen challenges. C’est la vie.

Sure, I know it seems like this is all easy for me to say since I’m a senior with no more high school classes to look forward to, but I think it’s still worth thinking about. I was talking to my friend Greta the other day and was amazed when I remembered that it was Pi Day a year ago– 3/14/06–that we both went on our first college visit, to MIT. Remember?

Sorry for my absence, everyone–I was just trying to drain the last dregs of my high school experience, relishing time spent with my bestest friends at Exeter. I’m currently on Spring Break for two weeks and will be going to Washington D.C. on the 25th of march to start my spring trimester internship in Senator John Kerry’s office. Should be lots and lots of fun. I’m excited about the opportunities for personal growth and free lobbyist food. I will be trying to get back into the blogging groove of things over break, though I don’t quite know what will happen while I am in Washington.

So, stay posted!