On the Road to Find Out

by Rachel Toor

  I am a reject.

  I was rejected from my first-choice college.

  I was rejected from my second-choice college.

  And I was rejected from my third-, fourth-, fifth-, sixth- seventh- and eighth-choice colleges.

  This seemed like the end of the world.

  Then I finally looked up and saw how small I had made my world, how narrow my focus had been. I realized I’d cared about the wrong things and not paid enough attention to the people closest to me. I hadn’t taken enough chances.

  In the past six months I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about rejection, failure, and loss. When I look at the people I most admire, many of them have experienced something that looks like failure. But when you take the time to exercise your powers of vision with more imaginative strength, to peer deep into the curves and shifts of how real lives are lived, you see that what happens when you fail is that you get an opportunity to think harder, to think differently.

  I used to hate being wrong. If I gave an incorrect answer in class—if I missed the sixth digit of pi or said the Civil War started in 1862—it would burn in me all day. If I got a 98 on a physics test instead of 100 because I left off the units, on the next test I would check every answer for units until my eyeballs bled. I stand before you now as valedictorian, top of the class, not because I cared so much about learning, but because I was afraid of not getting things right.

  Along the way, I missed out on a lot.

  I didn’t spend enough time listening to the people I love, or getting to know my fellow students, or being involved in the community, or even hanging out at games where people throw projectiles at one another’s heads. Though that last one may have been the result of an evolutionarily useful self-protective instinct.

  My unwillingness to participate was partly out of a fear of being rebuffed and also a reaction against expectations. I know that many of the students who applied to the schools I was rejected by do just the opposite: they are involved in everything, spend all their time being busy, shuttling between clubs and practices and contests and conferences and they never have a moment to really think.

  As it turns out, most of them got rejected too.

  It’s easy to be a critic. We know from President Theodore Roosevelt that it’s not the critic who counts, not the man who carps and quibbles, not the woman who says “I shoulda” or “I woulda,” but the person who says, strong and loud and unafraid, “I tried.”

  The way to change the world—and since this is a graduation speech, I feel it’s my responsibility to tell you, with all the conviction that a teenager who’s never done anything in her life can muster, the way to change the world—is for each of us to learn to embrace being wrong.

  I want to be able to make mistakes and then admit them. To apologize if necessary, and then to recalibrate, to rethink, to reconsider, to look again, to look more closely, and to see where I went astray. I want to be able to say that I love making mistakes.

  I’m not there yet, so please know that if anyone points out any errors in this speech, I may first argue and then I’ll go to my room and cry.

  But I want to develop into the kind of person who can say, without shame and with real delight, “I was wrong.” Because once I know I’m wrong, I can go about getting to the point where I am right. We recognize mistakes only in retrospect. Being afraid to make mistakes is more growth-stunting than smoking cigarettes. Self-satisfaction is the road to mediocrity.

  Six months ago, after being rejected from the only school I ever wanted to go to, I started running. At first I hated it.

  Then I liked it.

  And then it weirdly turned into a part of who I am.

  I once asked a friend, a good friend, who is a runner, a very good runner, to tell me what I was doing wrong. I wanted to get better. He said something that has stuck with me. He said, “Running is the act of catching yourself before you fall.”

  Even so, I realized it’s not the worst thing to fall.

  I want to throw myself into the world and at new things. That means I will fail at some and succeed at others.

  I will fall, I will fail, I will move on.

  I want to know great devotions and great enthusiasms.

  I have already experienced great love. I was in love with someone who weighed less than a pint of milk and who couldn’t be bothered to keep his own tail clean. Regardless of species or tail hygiene, I loved my rat, Walter. And when he died, I learned—I’m learning—that I will survive the loss, even if it means the world will never look the same again.

  I may be a reject. But I am not a failure. At least, not as long as I keep trying.

  28

  I couldn’t believe it when, after I finished speaking, the entire audience stood and cheered.

  We marched across the stage and the principal flipped our tassels and handed us our degrees and we tossed our hats to the sky. There was a giant roar when Jenni’s name was called. She had blinged out her mortarboard, making it cool and elegant and funky and fun all at once. Her dad was there. He hadn’t had a drink in a couple of weeks and Jenni was feeling optimistic, like maybe this time he’d be able to stay sober. My mom had asked him to sit with our family. Miles was sitting with them too. Mom had invited everyone over to our house for a catered brunch afterward.

  I walked toward them. Walter-the-Man stood thisclose to a woman with chin-length brown hair. She wore a trim suit that managed to look both stylish and comfortable. Tim Gunn would have approved.

  Walter-the-Man grabbed me around the shoulders and said, “Good job, sport.”

  “Don’t call me sport, chief.”

  “I want you to meet someone. This is Deborah.”

  OMG. The woman I knew more about than anyone I had never met before. Had they gotten back together? Walter-the-Man winked at me.

  Deborah’s eyes were rimmed with red and she was holding a tissue.

  “That was wonderful,” she said. “I feel like I know you, Alice. Walt talks about you all the time. That speech—I’ve heard a lot of graduation speeches—you made me laugh, and you made me cry. You nailed it.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “But you got something wrong.”

  “I did?” Oh crap.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding and smiling. “You weren’t rejected.”

  “No, I got that right. I was rejected. I can show you the letters.”

  “No,” she said, still nodding yes. “You weren’t rejected. Your applications were denied. If you failed, it was in not showing on paper how extraordinary you are. Your applications were rejected, not you.”

  I could see why Walter-the-Man liked Deborah and I hoped that they were back together.

  Joan—I hadn’t even known she was there—gave me one of her tight Joan-hugs. You couldn’t believe such a tiny person could squeeze so hard.

  Everyone huddled around and Joan handed me a bag, a light backpack with a cinched-tight drawstring, like the kind Miles often used.

  “Open it,” Joan said.

  I did. I dug my hand in and pulled out a race bib.

  “Half marathon. Tomorrow. You’re driving up with Miles, Nikki, and Owen.”

  “I can’t do a half marathon,” I said.

  And then I asked, “Can I?”

  “Of course you can,” Joan said.

  She was right. I could do a half marathon.

  “Keep looking in the bag,” Jenni said.

  “You guys have met?” I said.

  Joan threw an arm around Jenni and said, “We’ve all conspired on this. Walt insisted on bankrolling your entry fee. And he’s taking you guys out for a steak dinner after the race.”

  “I figured it would be cheaper than a meth lab,” Walter-the-Man said, and Deborah shook her head.

  “Keep looking,” Jenni said, bouncing on her toes. I fished out a box I recognized right away. I’d fondled these in the store. It was a Garmin wristwatch GPS.

  Dad said, “It doesn’t talk, I’m sure you’re happy to kn
ow. Now you’ll have lots of data about your pace, your distance, your calories burned. It may even make you a cup of coffee and clean your room.”

  “There’s more,” Jenni said, flapping her arms. Jenni sometimes flapped when she got excited.

  I reached in and found what I thought was a stick of Body Glide, but it turned out to be deodorant.

  “That’s from me,” said Walter-the-Man. “I don’t want to be around a stinker.” Deborah elbowed him in the ribs.

  There was a pair of socks and a hat and a water bottle, all of which said Runner’s Edge. Joan smiled.

  And something else, a pair of arm warmers, black with red flames on them.

  “Those are from me,” Miles said. “Because you’re like fire—you burn hot and fast,” and I got all embarrassed, especially when there was a giant “Aaawwww” from the group.

  Then I pulled out a singlet and held it against me. It was the perfect size and in purple, my favorite color.

  “Look at the back,” Jenni said, now more quiet and subdued.

  Printed in careful letters it said, Running in memory of Walter. There was a small silhouette of a rat.

  I was about to start crying when Jenni said, “One more.”

  At the bottom of the bag I found a small box. A where’s-the-box kind of box.

  I opened it.

  Inside was a tiny figure of a runner on a gold chain.

  I turned to Mom and wrapped my arms around her, breathing in her perfume. I didn’t realize until that moment that was what home smelled like.

  She held me close and whispered, “I’m so proud of you, Al.”

  And I whispered back, “I love you, Mommy. I love you so much.”

  And she said, “I love you more.”

  And then I said really loud, “NO, I LOVE YOU MORE,” and we laughed and kept hugging.

  And she said, “Fine.”

  And I said, “Fine.”

  And then Walter-the-Man bellowed, “ENOUGH. TIME FOR BRUNCH!”

  29

  The sun is shining, shining with all his might. Nikki is driving fast, and she and Owen are arguing about everything from genetically modified food to whether all right should be one word or two, while Miles and I, still morning-sleepy in the backseat, furtively (“characterized by stealth”) hold hands.

  I am nervous about the race, but I know I can do it.

  When we get to the start, the three of them take off to warm up and I look around and see a bunch of people I know from working at the store. David is doing stretches next to a tree, and Jeff is busy putting Body Glide in places you probably shouldn’t be touching in public. Candace has her hair in pigtails, looking cuter than a middle-aged woman has a right to, and Valerie is helping another woman pin on her number. I’ve seen more than a few men check out Ruth’s tanned, movie-star-beautiful legs.

  These are my peeps. I have become a runner.

  I glance down at the race bib pinned carefully onto my purple singlet and can already see it hanging on the START wall at the store. When the race is over, I will write on it, Alice, daring greatly.

  During the race, I will think about how hard I’ve had to work to make it to this place and how happy I am to have arrived. I can’t believe it’s only been six months since that first wet, miserable eight-minute slog on New Year’s Day.

  We gather at the start. We’re all crammed together and I smell sunscreen, spilled energy drinks, and body odor. People are wearing shorts and skirts and singlets and T-shirts from other races. At the front of the pack, a bunch of skinny guys without shirts are striding out to warm up. I can’t see Miles, but I know he’s there.

  After it’s over, I will listen to him talk about how the race went for him, and Nikki and Owen will each narrate their own adventures.

  And then I’ll tell the story of how it was for me.

  We are all here, we are all in the arena.

  The gun goes off and I begin to run.

  NOTE TO READERS

  When I worked in college admissions at Duke University, one of my student friends said, “Rachel, you’re the reason I don’t run.”

  She explained that since I didn’t start until age thirty, she figured she still had years to go before she laced up her running shoes.

  I’ve now run something like fifty or sixty marathons and ultramarathons—50Ks, 50-milers, a crazy 100-mile stage race in the Himalayas. I’ve led pace groups at marathons, coached a season of high school cross-country, and made great friends on weekly Sunday morning long runs. Running has gotten me trips to India, Thailand, Singapore, and Israel and has been my preferred way to celebrate good things, to think through hard decisions, and to get the ya-yas out when I’m mad.

  Senior year of high school, I was often mad. I worried that if I didn’t get into my first-choice college, life would be over. If I had been able to go for a run, maybe I wouldn’t have continually locked my keys in my car and snarled at my mother for the months I waited for fat and thin envelopes.

  The truth is I didn’t know jack about any of the colleges I’d applied to. The summer after my junior year, I went to France to restore a historic château (translation: I lugged around loads of dusty rocks) with a bunch of French and American high school and college students. The high school kids nattered incessantly about their applications. The two Yalies there, Win and Duffy, were the most intimidating, intelligent, scary people I’d ever met. I wanted to be just like them.

  All through high school I wrote. I wrote poetry, some really bad, and some a little less bad. I won contests. I got into Yale, I had always believed, because I’d written a good essay. Later, when I worked in admissions, I learned that the “dead grandma essay” is a kind of cliché and that the personal statement doesn’t matter all that much in terms of the outcome.

  At Yale, I felt small and stupid and like someone had made a mistake by admitting me. I was thirty-five years old by the time I paid off my student loans and I hadn’t written for pleasure since high school.

  After graduation, I worked in publishing. And then I quit and slid down the ladder of social mobility. I ran a lot, rode horses, and ate popcorn for dinner. When I was tired and hungry, I got a job working in admissions at Duke. Three years later I left feeling dirty, implicated in the process by which I traveled around the country getting kids all excited about applying so that we could reject them in April. I saw myself as a prophet of false hope.

  In my book Admissions Confidential (I’ve always hated that title; I wanted to call it Admission Impossible), I tried to lay bare the way things worked so that kids, and their parents, would know the real poop. Even if you do everything “right,” you’re still probably not going to get in. And this is what I’ve come to believe: Where you go to college matters not at all, and also a great deal, but not in the ways most people think. You can get a great education anywhere and can snag a fantastic job without a fancy degree. What counts is what you do in college and the people you meet there; your identity gets formed in ways that will last, affected by the company you keep. The dining hall can be a more important place of learning than the classroom.

  After I left my job in admissions, dead broke, my BFF hectored me into doing college counseling for her son. I realized that a thoughtful approach to the admissions process could make it a real and meaningful journey of self-discovery, a cool thing to witness. I’ve learned so much from the high school students I’ve worked with (a number of whom read an early draft of this book) and had a lot of fun doing it. I’m not an admissions counselor anymore. I’ve got a day job as a college professor, though I still sometimes eat popcorn for dinner.

  But here, for what it’s worth, is my best advice about the college admissions process:

  • Anyone who takes your money and says they can get you into college is either a liar or a fool. Probably a liar. A greedy liar.

  • Figure out what you’re passionate about—Japanese anime, reading poetry, finding alternative energy sources for developing countries—and figure out a way to pur
sue that. Doing “everything” will just make you tired.

  • Practice SATing. You don’t need an expensive course, but it’s a coachable test. As with running, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

  • Write letters to the teachers you’re asking for recommendations. Remind them of the work you’ve done in class and mention ideas and concepts that particularly intrigued you. This will help them write good—not just positive—recommendations.

  • Follow directions and send in what’s required. If you pad your application, readers will wonder what you’re trying to compensate for. In the file room at Duke they used to say, “The thicker the file, the thicker the kid.”

  • Get applications done the summer before senior year. The short essays are the hardest to write because they all end up sounding the same. Be specific. Be vivid.

  • Make sure you have eight (8!) first-choice schools, at varying levels of selectivity, any of which you would be thrilled to attend.

  • Don’t let money determine where you apply. It might affect where you go, but there’s a lot of financial aid available. Check out www.finaid.org.

  • Write your essay in the form of an e-mail to a friendly relative you rarely see. Show it to people who know you and love you enough to be critical. Listen if they say it’s boring or doesn’t sound like you. Better to admit to your flaws than to brag about your accomplishments.

  • Consider taking a gap year. Most colleges will let you defer after you’ve been admitted.

  • Know that wherever you end up—even if it’s your safety school—will likely turn out to be the right place for you.

  When my friends from high school and college find out that I’m a writer they’re not surprised. But they yowl with laughter when they learn about my running. You? They say. You’re a runner?

  Yep. The person who invented injuries to get out of gym class runs ultramarathons. How did I get from there to here? Easy. I just put one foot in front of the other and ran.

  But for those who want some more specific tips:

  • Get fitted for shoes at a running store. (If you have boobs, buy a running bra.) You don’t need any other equipment at first. You can run in jeggings.