It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [125]
After Mom’s death, Uncle John became the patriarch of the McKagan clan in addition to his own side of the family; his sons and daughters and grandchildren shared him with us. He helped me focus on the goal I had set for myself most recently—getting an education. The undergraduate admissions guidelines at Seattle University included categories for transfer students, international students, and “other students.” That was me. Or so I thought. As it turned out, even the “other” category didn’t have a slot where I would fit—it was for kids who had been homeschooled or had previously been booted from Seattle U, or adults who already had a BA and were seeking additional enrichment without working toward a degree.
Finally I talked to a staffer at the admissions office and was told I could apply. He instructed me to write an “admissions essay.” Admissions essay? What about my perfect GPA? I thought the doors would open instantly for me, a hero returning from the battlefields of life, scarred but alive. No. None of that. It instantly became clear that the school saw my junior college “achievements” as just sort of cute. And all I had to show from high school was a GED. You can’t get into Seattle U with a GED. Reality was setting in.
I hadn’t written an essay since I was in junior high, twenty years before. Thank God for Dave Dederer. I’d been friends with Dave since the last time I’d written an essay. By the mid-1990s, he was best known as the guitar player in Presidents of the United States of America, who had huge hits with “Lump” and “Peaches.” But I also knew him to be a well-educated man: he had majored in English at Brown—an Ivy League college—and had worked as an English teacher before his music career took off. He and I had a little side band, an acoustic duo called the Gentlemen, and we had been playing tiny gigs around Seattle ever since Susan, Grace, and I had started coming back regularly the year before.
“I don’t remember how to write an essay,” I told Dave.
Dave showed up at my house with a gift that I use to this day: Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. It became my go-to book on the ins and outs of the English language, and in its pages were the blueprints for the structure of an essay.
Next I asked Dave the obvious question.
“What do they want me to tell them? Do I just pick a random topic and write an essay on it?”
“No, Duff, tell them your story,” said Dave. “Tell them everything. Tell them about growing up in Seattle and playing in punk-rock bands and moving to L.A. Tell them you were in Guns N’ Roses, tell them you were a drunk, tell them you did cocaine and a lot of it. Tell them about your success, about getting strung out, and about your fall. Tell them about your redemption and getting sober and your martial arts and mountain biking. Tell them about Susan and your new baby. Let them know you are of the here and now and exactly how you got here.”
Whoa. I was skeptical.
But the admissions office liked the story. They invited me in for an interview.
“The next thing to address,” the admissions adviser said, “is your academic record. All we have to go on are a few classes at a community college in California. I’m sure you can understand how difficult it is for us to assess that. You don’t have any track record whatsoever in math, for instance.”
Shit. The essay was all well and good, but it was merely a starting point for a rigorous university like this.
“Here’s what we propose,” he continued. “See if you can gain admittance to Seattle Central Community College. If you can, here’s a list of classes we’d like you to take. Get all A’s and come back to us and we’ll consider your application at that time.”
The course list was like nothing I had ever done—college-level math, history