I was on a Zoom call with a student the other day, discussing all the disruptions to the regular college admissions cycle. As with many high school juniors, his SAT on March 14th was canceled, he's working out a fall-back plan for spring college visits, and he's trying to understand how the AP exams can possibly work as at-home, online tests.
Interestingly, because Greg is a competitive sailor, he had transitioned at the beginning of this semester to all-online courses. He needed maximum flexibility so that he can focus on his training out on the water. He's a sharp, extremely hardworking student with a solid load of honors and AP classes, but even though he's a capable guy, staying on top of all his obligations has been a big challenge.
And then the pandemic hit, social distancing took over, and things changed drastically. Weeks of travel plans for trainings and regattas were suddenly canceled, SAT preparation became a much longer-term proposition with no definite end date, and his course curriculum shifted to reflect the new format of the AP exams. For now, he has a lot more space to work with in his schedule.
Given that time, he asked, what should I be doing to get ready for college applications? Because we had already worked out a plan for researching and reaching out to the colleges he could no longer visit in mid-April, I suggested that it might be a good time to start the writing process.
I explained that I'd begun imagining what the year of the coronavirus college essay might be like for college admissions readers. Greg’s immediate reaction was that he didn't want to join the crowd on that one. There are plenty of other experiences, including natural disasters, that he's been through that he could write about. This whole shelter-in-place situation has been more like a weird vacation.
I'd love to hear about any other ideas, I replied, but it’s important that we really examine this moment in time and what it means for you. Believe me—this is not a vacation. Have you been keeping up with the news?
But I'm just being affected in the same sorts of ways that everyone my age is, he responded.
That may be right, I admitted, but what really matters here isn’t as much what you're experiencing. It’s way more about how you, individually, are experiencing it. And it’s going to matter to admissions readers, all of whom are experiencing this time in their own way.
We are living through history. I wish someone had told me that when I woke up on 9/11 and planted myself in front of CNN; the gravity of that moment really only set in later.
There is a paradox in what each of us has to do in times like these. On one hand, carry on, adapt, keep up with normal life in whatever way we can best approximate it. And yet, we have to find the space to process the meaning of this experience and all the ways, many of them subtle, in which we’re being affected by it.
We are undergoing change globally, as a human species. For all the wonders of society and civilization and technology, is it apparent yet how fragile the systems are that our entire lives are built upon? Is it apparent yet how fragile we are, as living, thinking, emotional creatures with the entire range of needs that correspond to our range of capabilities?
What else is this moment meant to reveal to us about ourselves, both collectively and individually? If you’re a teenager who will be staying in during spring break and prom and graduation, what might these circumstances mean for all the plans ahead of you, which you might have taken for granted, like going off to college?
More importantly, how does this situation activate your sense of future purpose? What can you do, given the right tools and training, to make a meaningful difference in the face of disasters of similar scale in the coming years? What are you doing now to make a difference in your various circles and communities?
What does this moment signal to you—about what’s ahead, what we are made of, what is activated in you as part of all of humanity stretched across the entire globe?
There are many questions to ask. Simply ask them, and keep asking new questions as they occur to you; it’s not about coming up with answers. Keep calm and carry on (online), and make your questioning part of your new normal.
If you need help, you can find it here.