Posts tagged college
Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor
For all the kids who are applying to college…I think this is worth reading. A comical, entertaining, and much needed perspective in the midst of all the anxious hand-wringing. One choice quote:
Part of my problem in getting on board the college frenzy was that I genuinely believed that any one of the colleges on our approved list of a hundred or so was capable of providing students with a good, even a great, education. The funny thing about teenagers is that very often the best of them, the most interesting and curious, are rather lousy high school students. They have other things on their minds than geeking out every single point on the AP U.S. history exam. They are very often readers, and preparation for elite-college admission does not allow one to be a reader; it’s far too time consuming. These “lousy” students were often among my favorites, and I never feared that they were going to lose a chance at a great education because they didn’t have the stuff of an “elite” admission. They themselves were smart. They didn’t need some Ferrari of a college nudging them along the path to a great education; they were going to get one wherever they went.
(via the-feature)
On leaving
We sent off Emma to the airport today.
I’ve been in youth groups since I was 11 and let me tell you, when you send someone off, nothing changes. It never gets easier. Each life matters. Deeply. In its own way.
You get a sense with each one, too. A sense of what’s coming, of the challenges ahead, and occasionally of what you feel God might just do in their lives. It’s exciting, but it’s all so tentative. Nothing feels certain—like it could go either way. Like a hunch. ”Maybe it’s just a hunch,” I often mutter in my head. Or maybe it’s from God. Maybe it’s even direction. For the person. For me. Direction on how to pray for the person? Yeah, that sounds about right…
I remember when Daniel left for uni 2 years ago. In the summer of 2007 we had gone on our first (and only!) mission trip together. He hadn’t said this to me, but he’d said it to Sarah: ”I really want to get right with God this year.” Now, the last few years hadn’t been laced with every sort of evil; but there’s no doubt that Daniel had been testing waters farther and farther away from the shore. And during that trip he had decided it was time to come back home. Home we went, and again, there was that feeling of tentativeness. Would his words last more than one post-trip week? Two? Three? How about a year? Or would we have gotten our hopes up for nothing?
