"I just don't know what challenges I've faced..."

Girl next to me, senior in high school, chatting animatedly with her tutor, rattling off a lengthy list of potential universities: MIT, Duke, Harvard, Stanford, UCLA. University of Michigan is her safety school.

Before they dive into the complex work of detangling essay prompts, the two of them — one, dirty blonde, rower, sweatshirt and headband; the other, middle-aged, peacoat, and headscarf — giggle with excitement about the high-schooler's recent reads: Walden, The Crucible, Beowulf. For fun, Catcher in the Rye, and Great Expectations. They muse for a few moments about the depth and beauty of Thoreau's work, and the raw cadence of Holden Caulfield's narration.

Finally, they enter business — both pull out their laptops, retrieving college application essay drafts from their proper folders, and on some cloud drive, review her essays. An issue arises.

"I had so many plans and aspirations to go farther, and now I really feel held back from achieving my potential, but also... I just don't know what challenges I've faced," the young woman says.
"Hmm... it is hard to think of a response to that, isn't it?" the tutor responds. For the first time in awhile, they pause in silence.

--
I can't help but fill the silence for them, and think of so many of my students, who face quite the opposite dilemma: I have so many challenges to face, I just don't know what plans and aspirations I can have. For a moment, I am remembering yesterday, and the smell of sweat and Expo markers and Frito chips that filled my classroom. I am remembering the bodies filing in and out, some on task, some off ask, most, desperate to learn and unsure of how to do so.

In another moment, I am remembering my own high school experience, littered with late-nights on laptops, churning up essays, and plans, and driving to the 24-hour Starbucks to do research, (or at least try, and instead, complain about ex-boyfriends), and the raging discomfort of being unsure of whether I would get into one private four-year university, or the other.

But here she is, here I am, and there they are. For many of them, college is still just a lofty dream, a set of shiny buildings, a gateway to the NBA or the NFL, a far-off land with no parents — a dream. And we all had the same dream, once, didn't we?

It's something like guilt, and something like anger. I've pored over achievement gap statistics for the past four years, and yet, the opportunity gap between the affluent and the poor has not been more perfectly painted than in a ten-minute eavesdropping at a cafe.

After all of this, I sigh. "What has been will be again. What has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun."

--
I've tuned out for a bit, but jumped back to the conversation just in time to hear the tutor respond excitedly,

"Oh! That's the perfect sob story! They'll eat that right up."

Admissions crisis averted. All will be well.