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Rant & Rave
AT a college-planning workshop, I was given the common application to peruse. Once I finished filling in my name, address, zip code and parents' names, I started to wonder why any college would want me. Determined to give
Yale college tryI have pretty good SAT scores, and a 4.0 GPA, I'm friendly, flexible and enjoy new experiences, but what makes me more special than anyone else? Does my participation in Key Club, or Science Bowl, or being editor of the school paper make me a choice candidate?
There are many students who are just like me, and often do more, are even "better." There are many others out there who have gone beyond AP courses and already run their own businesses, are martial arts champions, campaign in politics, do great, amazing things for society and mankind.
There is the girl who put together "Ophelia Speaks"; I've read about a boy who made a million in stocks, and a girl who won the summer fiction contest in USA Weekend.
Some kids are student body presidents, and some of them win numerous art awards. I have friends who are piano virtuosos, and one of them is also the top cellist in the state.
I'm just a second violin. Why would any college want me when it could have the top cellist?
Then there are the athletes. I do not believe in beating someone up in order to stop them from getting into my territory carrying a pigskin, nor can I run the mile in 4 minutes. In fact, I hate running. I do, rarely, but only because muscles go through atrophy and scream for some kind of use.
MY hand-eye-foot coordination is terrible and don't even ask me to do push-ups. Why do you think I threw away the flyers from the Air Force Academy? No sane person would go to a school where they require you to wake up at ungodly hours and do 40 sit-ups in a minute.
I'm not a genius at math, and my writing is amateur at best, and frankly, I love to waste time lounging in front of the TV or go online and talk to my friends.
Maybe geography will be an advantage for me. How many can claim that they live on a dormant volcano in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?
Not many. However, I doubt that my first-choice college, Yale, will be impressed that I live in a tourist attraction. There are so many other talented students here who apply there.
Even my ethnicity is a disadvantage. Korean-Americans excel all over the nation, and guess where they all apply?
I have to convince myself that yes, I am worthy of that school. It wants me. Without me, that school would be without an energetic, enthusiastic, precocious (one college called me that), Korean-American living in Honolulu, violin-hating, tennis-playing, newspaper-editing, Key-Clubbing, conference-planning, happy, friendly, outspoken young woman.
Actually, I don't really need to convince myself, all I really need to do is convince that school, or any other school, for that matter.
Yoon Jee Kim is a junior at Roosevelt High School
who still plans to apply to Yale.Rant & Rave is a Tuesday Star-Bulletin feature
allowing those 12 to 22 to serve up fresh perspectives.
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