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To Whom It May Concern:

As Jessica Darling’s writing instructor at the Summer Pre-College Enrichment Curriculum in Artistic Learning, I read her work with pleasure, exhilaration, and even envy. Her journals vibrated with the verve, energy, and life that can only be found in the young. Having her in class made me long to go back to that time myself, when I was emboldened by the unawareness of my own naïveté.

Jessica is one of the most gifted young women I have ever met. As I’m sure you are aware, there are many gifted high-school students vying for admission to Columbia University. I imagine few who would so greatly benefit from the education your university can provide, both in and out of the classroom. Jessica’s shining intelligence is in danger of being dimmed by lackluster life experience. Having read her most intimate writings, I can vouch that even her deepest observations—though funny, vivid, telling, and true—are appallingly shallow.

Jessica is obsessed with the petty banalities that are the hallmark of high-school life, simply because she hasn’t been exposed to anything else. She needs an eye-popping, high-voltage shock to her system, which she would no doubt get if she could plug into the eclectic electricity of Columbia and New York City. This intellectual and emotional jolt is the life force she needs to make her mark on the world. Without it, I’m afraid she’ll never get beyond suburbia.

As Confucius says, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” The best thing that could happen to Jessica is for her to learn just how much she doesn’t know. And the best place I can think of for such an education is at one of the greatest institutions located in the most indefinable city in the world.

Sincerely,

Samuel MacDougall

So I was right all along. Mac did think I was superficial. Ah, but with potential.

You might think I’d be offended by this. I’m not. Backhanded compliments are definitely the way to my heart. The fact that he was so honest about my intellectual shortcomings it makes his praise all the more believable. He’s right. I am superficial with potential. Is it me, or did Mac make it sound like going to Columbia could turn me into the person I’m supposed to be? Aka Jenn Sweet? Does it make sense to find my “life force” in a place where I’m likely to be murdered live on television? Or am I just being melodramatic? I mean, do the next four years of my life really merit so much deliberation? Will choosing the wrong school really have that much of an impact on the rest of my life? Especially when the odds are 1600 to 1 that I will choose the wrong school?

But what if Columbia is the right one? The “1” of 1600 to 1.

WWJD? What Would Jenn Do? I know damn well what she would do. But—as has been gleefully pointed out by anyone who has cracked the spine of Bubblegum Bimbos—she is not me. I don’t know who the hell I am. I’m definitely not the Jessica Darling I used to be. I mean, who is Jessica Darling if she doesn’t run on the track team and doesn’t write for the school paper anymore? Weren’t those my defining traits? Who am I now without them?

Hope thinks I’m putting too much pressure on myself, because I’ll thrive academically wherever I go. She’s completely overlooking the social variables, but it’s not her fault. It doesn’t matter whether she gets into Parsons or the Rhode Island School of Design (her top two choices) because she can find ways to be happy anywhere. She’s very much like Gladdie in that way.

With all this weighing on my brain, I consulted Len. You know, my boyfriend, the person I’ve been sucking face with on a semi-regular basis, the person I’m supposed to turn to in times of personal crisis.

I told him all about how I visited the Columbia campus last summer and just felt like I belonged there, for reasons I can’t quite explain. How after 9/11 I got freaked out by the idea of going away to a primary terrorist target, and how my parents hate all cities, even before the WTC gave them a legitimate reason, and probably wouldn’t