Yeah. So.
One represents the status quo. The other represents my dream job. Sigh.
My colleagues are all cutthroat.
But I have an office.
My colleagues are back biters.
But I have an office.
Some of my colleagues are actually dim-witted and rely on me to do their work. These colleague are called "my directors."
But yet, the office.
My name is getting known in the company.
But they didn't fly me to L.A. when promised.
My boss cheated on his wife while he was in Vegas and talks about it with my other boss, within earshot.
But I have an office (and can close the door).
Daniel Craig, please save me from my job in 007. Thank you.
************
Okay, well, anyway...
I have learned that there is something called The First Choice Letter which is sent to your preferred private school once you and your child decide on said school. The First Choice Letter is sent out (which is like Early Decision?) and in which you basically say, "OOOOH, IF YOU PICK ME, I WILL DEFINITELY PICK YOUUUUUU!." But then, I have heard, you can only send ONE -- yes, ONE, First Choice Letter to your First Choice School. If you send more than one First Choice Letter to any number of the incestuous private schools of New York City, you will be found out. They talk, you see. To each other.
Which is why parents of PUBLIC school candidates engage their children in the most rigous, cheating, deceitful coaching, which goes like this:
Mother: Honey, School XYZ will only accept you if you tell them they are absolutely fabulous.
Child: But mother, I don't LIKE School XYZ.
Mother: Okay, but we don't know WHICH SCHOOL will accept you, so just say that you think School XYZ is absolutely fabulous, okay, sweetcakes? That way we'll have at least one school to pick from.
Child: But I DON'T LIKE SCHOOL XYZ.
It is a well-known fact that the Child used words such as, "Enthusiastic" and "Inspired" when she interviewed with School XYZ several weeks ago. Which means she is likely holding a spot for herself which she will inevitably dump, once she gets accepted to her actual First Choice School.
She could be tying up A's acceptance to that school. But some dimwit mother has coached her into betraying what will make her truly happy.
The mother is a leech coach.
4 comments:
I read about that first choice letter thing. . . somewhere. . . My hubby was saying we should move to NY, but I was like, "I'd *love* it there--except for how crazy hard the school system can be to deal with."
Well it used to be "easier" when there were no choices.
Part of the pressure is that kids can choose from many schools and even out of district (and in high school there are no districts; it's citywide). So there is a lot of competition (among middle-class, mostly white kids, that is. Of course thank god for the hundreds of thousands of poor kids whose parents are not even in this process at all, and just send their kids to their default neighborhood falling-apart schools).
To respond to la maitresse, It's hard to believe that an admissions person would take at face value a child's rehearsed "enthusiasm" and thereby "save" a place for her. If the parents know about this "strategy" then certainly the admissions people, who do this full-time, are going to know about it too, don't you think?
Anyway, in the public high school admissions process, don't you have to list your preferences, which amounts to sending a "first (and second and third etc.)-choice letter"? (although maybe you're talking about a school that's not part of that --- I don't know, are some schools, like e.g.Bard, not part of that process?)
Anyway even if the kid is trying to "save" a first-choice place for herself at a school she really doesn't love, I can't particularly blame the parents. The whole set-up -- with few places at the most desirable schools --is screwed up.
One could even argue, if that were one's wont, that the system is set up as an analog of the competitive, cut-throat system that the parents are engaged in in their workplaces -- so if school is supposed to train children to function in later life, maybe it's working, and that "first-place-saving" girl will do well on Wall Street in ten years or so.
Concerning your last thought:
My concern was not exactly about snagging an opportunity where none exists. My concern was this: if we don't want something, but we're told to go for it anyway, until we're pressed to do it against our instinct/better judgment --- is that analog okay for us humans, in general?
Oh! I'm totally with you on that.
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