06-19-2013, 10:08 AM
By car, that much I know.
In HS I hadn't a clue. I was a top 10%er but not one of the shining stars. Our school and class was loaded with the kids of Caltech professors. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. But I had great (for then) test scores. One lucky thing was I got taken under the wing of a family whose daughter had my best friend-- and then me--as a boyfriend. (Can't explain that either, but it changed my life.) They were a Stanford family and just great people, and active best friends with another that was a C..al family. Both families actively worked on me to set my sights high and that I did belong at great schools. That's how I started even thinking about colleges. That, and the fact that most of the guys in my class who were USC bound were just *****. So C..al and Stanford were the two schools to which I applied.
But fate intervened. I was a middling German language student with a grade that would have me immediately ruled out of Stanford then and now. So by late senior year, C..al was my only option. Anyway, our native German teacher had his summer return to the Fatherland booked and (this part still gets me) submitted the year-end grades before the final and flew off to Germany. As chance and hard work would have it, I did really well on the final...only to find out that my fate always was pre-sealed. Game over. Got into neither Stanford nor C..al.
So, a freshman year of total focus at community college got me....nowhere w/ C..al.  It was geared for 2-year transfers. So I finished freshman year knowing Stanford was my only hope. I remember the day envelope came. That summer I was working construction at night and would come home and snooze out on a folding lounge in the back yard, working on my tan. (Dumb). One day my mom brings in the mail, comes out and hands me the envelope. It was thick. Didn't open it. I knew I got in. Went back to sleep. Can't imagine those stressed-out, academically obsessed kids these days reacting like that.
The epilog is that not getting in as a freshman changed my total Stanford experience. I drove into campus as a sophomore: no campus housing with peers, no freshman year of bonding and friends/acquaintances to carry me forward and a rude awakening to the difference between community college and the standards of a Stanford educational experience. I now know and continue to see what classmates at Stanford got from freshman year that I missed. I envy them and still feel I missed out on something very important. So after a disorienting sophomore year I went to Stanford in Germany as a junior and then, suddenly, I was senior focused on what I was going to do after graduation. Stanford in Germany stands out as THE Stanford experience for me. That, and Stanford football.  But, I got a kind of do-over. The redrumette got in as a freshman and just this last year got spit out as a PhD. Stanford gave back to her much of what I missed. Stanford owed our family a great experience and this time it paid off. Helped me come to terms w/ my own experience and made my Stanford class reunion a lot more fun.
P.S. A somewhat more macabre HS teacher story. Like garvin's, but a HS English teacher who inspired me to work hard and love literature and language. I knew he'd be more excited than I was with my Stanford acceptance. Unfortunately he had died of a massive heart attack a couple months prior. The school held a memorial for him with a Rose Queen (who had been in the same English class w/ me) delivering the eulogy. Grrrrrrrr. I really, really regret not being able to share with him tangible result of his teaching and general life counseling.
In HS I hadn't a clue. I was a top 10%er but not one of the shining stars. Our school and class was loaded with the kids of Caltech professors. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. But I had great (for then) test scores. One lucky thing was I got taken under the wing of a family whose daughter had my best friend-- and then me--as a boyfriend. (Can't explain that either, but it changed my life.) They were a Stanford family and just great people, and active best friends with another that was a C..al family. Both families actively worked on me to set my sights high and that I did belong at great schools. That's how I started even thinking about colleges. That, and the fact that most of the guys in my class who were USC bound were just *****. So C..al and Stanford were the two schools to which I applied.
But fate intervened. I was a middling German language student with a grade that would have me immediately ruled out of Stanford then and now. So by late senior year, C..al was my only option. Anyway, our native German teacher had his summer return to the Fatherland booked and (this part still gets me) submitted the year-end grades before the final and flew off to Germany. As chance and hard work would have it, I did really well on the final...only to find out that my fate always was pre-sealed. Game over. Got into neither Stanford nor C..al.
So, a freshman year of total focus at community college got me....nowhere w/ C..al.  It was geared for 2-year transfers. So I finished freshman year knowing Stanford was my only hope. I remember the day envelope came. That summer I was working construction at night and would come home and snooze out on a folding lounge in the back yard, working on my tan. (Dumb). One day my mom brings in the mail, comes out and hands me the envelope. It was thick. Didn't open it. I knew I got in. Went back to sleep. Can't imagine those stressed-out, academically obsessed kids these days reacting like that.
The epilog is that not getting in as a freshman changed my total Stanford experience. I drove into campus as a sophomore: no campus housing with peers, no freshman year of bonding and friends/acquaintances to carry me forward and a rude awakening to the difference between community college and the standards of a Stanford educational experience. I now know and continue to see what classmates at Stanford got from freshman year that I missed. I envy them and still feel I missed out on something very important. So after a disorienting sophomore year I went to Stanford in Germany as a junior and then, suddenly, I was senior focused on what I was going to do after graduation. Stanford in Germany stands out as THE Stanford experience for me. That, and Stanford football.  But, I got a kind of do-over. The redrumette got in as a freshman and just this last year got spit out as a PhD. Stanford gave back to her much of what I missed. Stanford owed our family a great experience and this time it paid off. Helped me come to terms w/ my own experience and made my Stanford class reunion a lot more fun.
P.S. A somewhat more macabre HS teacher story. Like garvin's, but a HS English teacher who inspired me to work hard and love literature and language. I knew he'd be more excited than I was with my Stanford acceptance. Unfortunately he had died of a massive heart attack a couple months prior. The school held a memorial for him with a Rose Queen (who had been in the same English class w/ me) delivering the eulogy. Grrrrrrrr. I really, really regret not being able to share with him tangible result of his teaching and general life counseling.