Dear Creative Writers,

I have been desperately trying to find a good topic to write to you about this week. and have started and discarded several letters (the most promising one being a missive about the Cubs, but frankly their performance in Pittsburgh Friday and Saturday left me a bit disgusted). Anyway, in lieu of anything more brilliant to write about, I've decided to post herein one of my all-time favorite letters, about a subject with which, I'm sure, you all are--or soon will be--intimately familiar. Enjoy.

Dear College Applicants,

Lethargy kills. Or at least it would kill if it were not for the fact that it can't seem to motivate itself to get the job done. It always seems to hang back, in the wings, too tired to act out its full fury. So lethargy sort of injures. Or perhaps it bruises. Or maybe it bumps. Dents? Nicks? OK: Lethargy doesn't do a damned thing because it's too damned lethargic to move!

--end metaphor--

I have been so damn tired this week--partially the result of being not entirely healthy, partly the result of the play, partly the result of a whole series of personal issues I will not go into right now, and partly the result of staying awake until all hours of the night reading or writing or whatever--that I have hardly had time to think about the school year and how it is progressing. I have fallen behind in all of my classes--despite making it a goal for the year that this would not happen. I am trying to organize a Halloween story-telling party for my church, but I have hardly had time in the evenings to make any phone calls (mostly due to the fact that I am getting home after 10:00 most nights, and this week--play week--certainly won't be any better) and the poor kids might just find that there are no stories. I don't feel comfortable that I can get everything done; I am pulled twenty different directions at once; I feel, basically, like a high school senior.

I realize that I am not alone in my overburdened state. I have mentioned it before: I realize that high school students are among the most overworked segment of society (at least if they are doing what they are supposed to be doing). And I also realize that little of that overabundance of travail is your choice; most of the assignments are imposed by others, and all of them are the result of something that is required or something that is "optional" but you'd better do it if you want your college applications to look good. Yes, there is some element in there somewhere that involves things that you do for pleasure, but even then...do you really want to immerse yourself in soccer or football or basketball or dramas for three or four hours every single day? It doesn't become just the teensiest bit redundant?

"I celebrate myself and sing myself"; Someone on the radio in here is reciting from Whitman's "Song of Myself." Well, what the heck: if you don't sing yourself, who will? You are the only one who really knows the hell you might be going through. Five classes, maybe six or seven or eight (or even, in the case of at least one extremely masochistic lunatic that I know, nine), plus extra-curriculars, often several simultaneously, plus (often) employment, plus family and personal commitments. (Lunch? What is lunch?) This is supposed to be the "best time of your life."

Well, I'm on record as saying that high school was definitely not the best time of my life, although there were some things I did enjoy (like playing chess in unused classrooms, eating warm bagged lunches in the small cubicle that was the school newspaper office, creating mammoth "letters of the week" with my best friend, each of us trying to outdo the unwieldiness of the other's epistle, rushing home to watch "Dark Shadows" after school or to skate on the frozen pond in the winter, leaving school with excruciating stomach cramps during sophomore year only to discover, 36 miserable hours later, that I had appendicitis--gosh, the images that come back are awfully random!). But what I'd like to go on record as saying is that I believe that anyone who truly believes that high school was the best time of his life either has had a pathetically miserable life or is allowing nostalgia to completely cloud reality. If this is the "best time of your life" why do you spend so much of it walking emotional tightropes? Why do you worry so much about how everyone is going to perceive things you do or say? (I know: some of you don't. But pardon me: those who say they don't care about what others think are either mature beyond their years or kidding themselves--probably the latter.) Why do you worry about whether some moron with a home computer and the personality of a toad is going to plaster your alleged sexual escapades all over the senior paper? (And what is it you worry about here: that people will think these rumors are true or that they will recognize that they are false?)

We all worry about things. We worry a lot. But in high school there is simply so much more to worry about. Take college applications. Please. Though some of you may feel that it is not material what college you attend (and, with a few top-end and a lot of low-end exceptions, that is undoubtedly true) all of you are forced, in the fall of the "best year of your life," to fill out reams of paper and compose heaps of brilliantly written BS in order to have a chance to get into a school and make your future look brighter (which you undoubtedly will accomplish by composing more heaps of brilliantly written BS once you are there). What do they ask you on applications that they can't get simply by looking at your transcript (which they all require you to send anyway)? And what can they expect to learn about you by asking the questions that they ask? All of them can be subdivided into two categories: general (please read that: "boring") and bizarre.

General:

Why do you want to come to this college? (Gee, um, because I could find it on the map?) Tell me something about yourself that isn't on the transcript. (I lost my virginity when I was seven.) What are your career ambitions? (Well, I hadn't really thought about it; I guess I'd really enjoy cleaning out the monkey cage at the zoo.) What idea has influenced your life the most? (I think it was when they canceled "The Brady Bunch." Isn't it just too cool that they made it into a movie?) What person or persons do you admire the most? (My parents. Did you really expect me to say anything else? They are going to read this!) What is your favorite work of literature? (Do videos count? If so, then definitely "Bambi Meets Godzilla." If not, then I guess any issue of Amazing Comics.)

Bizarre:

If you could be any animal other than human, what would you be? (A tarantula. I love small hairy things that make women cringe.) What is the most antisocial thought you have ever had? (This is a trick question, right? I LOVE MY COUNTRY AND GOD AND MY PARENTS AND THIS UNIVERSITY AMEN.) If you could talk to any person in history, who would it be and what would you say? (What is this, "Quantum Leap"? I'd like to talk to the guy that hired you and find our what drugs he was taking.)

Of course, these questions are intended for one purpose only, and it is not to see if you can write. (If it were, why would they not standardize the question and simplify the procedure, thereby enabling you to do your best work on it?) No, the real reason for the endless repetition and the tedium of the college application process is that the people who run admissions offices had miserable high school experiences (like most of us) and harbor an abnormal repressed hatred of all high school students. They are clearly sadists who want to make your lives hell. (I guess I am being a little bit facetious here: the real reason, I am certain, lies in the desire to make sure you really want to attend their school. Why on earth else would you waste your time this way?)

And what about the interview process? I only went to one interview, and it was enough to convince me that any college so pretentious and self-absorbed as to feel that its representatives need to see applicants for admission face to face is too pretentious and self-absorbed to provide any kind of quality of life for its student body. (What do they really get out of these things anyway? Just another opportunity to make you sweat, and a chance to see that you are not the Elephant Man.) This, of course, does not apply to optional interviews; those, I guess, are cool. At least they provide you with an excellent excuse to take a midterm vacation during senior year.

It was a good thing, as it turned out, that I detested that particular university. They "waiting-listed" me. This is the final straw: the ultimate torture device that colleges save for people they really hate. "Let's not let them into our little club, but let's not tell them for another few months. Heh heh heh...

Anyway, as the days wind down toward some more restful future that in all likelihood will never come, when I might finally be allowed some consort with that elusive goddess Free Time, know that I empathize completely with what you have gone through.

Just remember, as the entire universe slips inexorably into a black hole: these are the best years of your life.

Ms K

P.S. Why not send me your best/weirdest application questions. Could be fun!