“My colleague says that Deborah told her about this a couple of days ago,” John said, returning. “I honestly don’t know what happened. She’s going to go take the younger students out to the field. Usually the older kids are in charge of afternoon milking, but we think this is more important.”
“Oh,” Portia said, both perturbed to be placed in the same category as a cow and relieved to have at least come out ahead. “Okay. Can we get started?”
He turned back to the kids and gravely raised his hand, palm front, as if he were a crossing guard. He said nothing, but as each student noticed him, he or she stopped talking and did the same. Gradually, a forest of hands were raised. The talk thinned to scattered voices, then one resistant pocket of girls in a corner, and then nothing. When there was silence, the hands came down, John’s first.
“Thank you,” he told them. “Now, we have a visitor. I’d like you to welcome her and give her your respectful attention. This is Portia Nathan.”
He went directly to one of the couches, where the students compressed themselves and made room for him. Watching him, Portia found herself somewhat disconcerted, not so much by his quick departure from the stage—or the nondescript patch of floor that served as a stage—as by the fact that he had somehow remembered not only her first name, but her last. It took a further instant to decide that she could not remember having given her last name at all, though this was not a good enough reason to stand here, distracted, before the already dubious and unprepared students who were waiting for her. Of course, the elusive Ms. Rosengarten must have briefed her staff: Portia Nathan would be coming from Princeton. And now Portia Nathan was standing here, dumbstruck by the incongruity of social etiquette in a cow barn. You’re such a snob, she just had time to tell herself. And there was no reason to feel so… bothered. But she was still bothered.
“Hello, I’m Portia,” she finally managed. “I’m from Princeton. I’ve brought a film—”
“Isn’t that a college?” said a muscle-bound kid in a Phish T-shirt.
“A university,” she said. “Princeton University. It’s in Princeton, New Jersey.”
“How’s that different from a college?” said a girl from the nearest couch.
“A college doesn’t have graduate schools or graduate students. A university does. We have graduate students in many departments, so we’re a university. Has anyone been to Princeton?”
None of them raised a hand.
“Have any of you begun looking at colleges?”
None of them raised their hands, but one boy said, “I’m going to UNH to study animal husbandry.”
“UNH is great for that. It’s not something we teach at Princeton.…”
With this, whatever authority she still retained seemed to dissipate. The mood in the room shifted.
“I’m not really convinced that college is necessary,” one girl said from the back of the room. She was skinny as a stick, with a military haircut. Military for a guy.
“No?” Portia said, detecting the slightest of wobbles in her voice.
“No. Look, a college degree can cost a fortune. Why should we? It’s like buying something you don’t need, that happens to cost… What does it cost to go to Princeton?”
“Most of our students receive financial aid,” Portia said tersely, deflecting the question.
“A lot of money, anyway. A ton. For a piece of paper and a couple of letters after your name.”
“Well… ,” Portia began. She found that she had let the thread of this surprising conversation escape her. Now, she was having a problem orienting herself. There was something about the cows outside, the intensely blue sky through the huge windows, and these kids, sorting out for themselves who she was and what she wanted, as if she were not standing here, ready to explain.
“Look,” said the girl with the military haircut, “please explain to me why I should be applying to an elitist institution with a history of antiblack, antigay, and antifemale oppression.” She got to her feet. She was tall, with narrow shoulders lost in an absurdly large lumberjack shirt. “I might concede that a college degree is necessary if you want to pursue the societally approved definition of success—you know, three-car garage and framed degree on the wall and a twenty-thousand-dollar watch. But what if that’s not your goal? What if all you want is to lead a fulfilling life and make the world better? If you’re not going to work for a corporation or run for office or be a lawyer, aren’t you better off sitting in a room reading books for four years? That doesn’t cost anything.”
She looked at them with a certain growing unease. Nearly a decade at Princeton, and before that a six-year stint at Dartmouth, and she couldn’t remember an encounter quite like the one this was shaping up to be. They were a little slovenly, of course, but you saw slovenly kids everywhere, even in the most rarefied of prep schools. She was used to piercings, tattoos, revealing clothing, even attitude, but the point was, even in the toughest high schools, the schools where educators were trying frantically to get their students out the door holding a diploma and not a baby or a gun, even there, the ones who bothered to turn up at her presentations were the very ones who wanted what she had to offer—or not just wanted, but yearned for, dreamed of. They knew the road to a different kind of life could be found weaving through Harvard Yard or Yale’s Old Campus or under the Princeton archways. She didn’t doubt that there were kids like this girl at every school she visited, but they tended to give her presentations a miss. They were not forward thinking. They did not have three-car garages on their minds, for better or ill. Or issues of elitism. Or ambitions of self-fulfillment that went beyond the immediate. She just never saw them. They were off smelling the roses or breathing deep the first joint of the day or plotting mayhem against their enemies. Or if they were in attendance—compelled by school requirements or ordered by parents—she supposed they just kept their mouths shut and amused themselves, watching their striving classmates try to impress the Princeton rep. Was it her responsibility to encourage them to apply to any college, let alone Princeton? Wasn’t it hard enough to find the hungry kids, whose families were not educated, who lived without privilege, to let them know that there were still a few, a very few, magic portals in the world that led from one socioeconomic class to another, and she was standing next to one of them?
Looking at this group, variously reclined on the couches or cross-legged on the floor, every one of them alert to the strain in the room, she found that the language for this occasion simply eluded her. She knew how to speak to prep school students, to first-generation kids from all parts of the globe, to magnet school students in the inner cities. She knew how to speak to stressed-out kids in the affluent suburbs who looked at her with pleading, hopeless expressions: Please let me in and I know you won’t, in woeful tandem. She had talked to groups of homeschooled kids, whose parents kept vigilant watch at the edges of the room, and foreign students, hurled from afar into American boarding schools or exchange programs, who hadn’t seen their parents in years but understood that all of it had been for this. She knew when to be a salesman, a teacher, a counselor, or a motivational speaker. She knew how to hold hands and how to crack the whip. But these kids… she was having trouble making them out. What were they? Not hippies or Goths. Not scholars per se. They were fearless, that was clear. And rude. And curious, at least some of them. And not remotely hesitant to challenge her.
“It’s an interesting question,” Portia said uncertainly. “And your alternative, sitting in a room reading books all day, does sound very cost-effective. But it also strikes me as a little lonely. And not truly rigorous, if you think about it. After all, once you’ve read all those books, don’t you want to talk to somebody else who’s reading them, too? Or do you want to have the kind of education where your initial impressions are never challenged? Where you’re never asked to refine your opinions or actually prove your theories? There’s something very exciting about a community of scholars, you know.”
“This is a c
ommunity of scholars,” the girl said a little petulantly. “We can go through our lives seeking out communities of scholars. What you’re talking about is a corporation, no different than a bank or an oil company. Only your product is a piece of paper with some Latin on it. You let people pay you tuition and then you give them the piece of paper. Princeton graduates have a lot of status, don’t they?”
“Define status,” Portia said, idly wondering whether the charming John was ever going to come to her rescue.
“In the consumerist culture. In the corporate culture. They move into high-paying jobs where they shift numbers around on a piece of paper or a computer screen, and they live in privileged enclaves with guards at the gate, and they produce the next generation to go to places like Princeton. Or have I been reading too much John Cheever?”
Portia laughed despite herself. “Can one ever read too much John Cheever?”
“It’s just I think we should be educating ourselves to be citizens of the world, you know? Not just citizens of the guarded, suburban enclave.”
“Well, I happen to agree with that,” Portia said tersely. “We, as a university, happen to agree with that. That’s why we offer our students so many study abroad options, including our Princeton in Africa and Princeton in Asia programs. In fact, our university motto is ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service and the Service of All Nations.’ We’re all about making citizens of the world.”
“But you can’t make citizens of the world,” the girl said with annoying passion. “That’s just my point. We have to become citizens. Naturally.”
“That’s a very subtle distinction,” Portia said. “Now, I’d like to—”
“No. I don’t think so. I think the American university has become a sausage factory, turning out substandard product. That’s what I love about this school. We follow our own pursuit of awareness, wherever that takes us. We come out whole people, not sausages.”
“And what, as whole people, do you intend to do with your lives?” Portia said testily.
“Live them,” said a boy on another couch. “Live them well, tread lightly on the earth. Leave the planet better than we found it.”
“That sounds very laudable. How will you leave the planet better? Will you eradicate disease? You’ll need a medical degree. If you want to create new drug therapies, you’re going to have to be a research scientist. That’s a PhD. Want to defend the innocent and secure justice for all? I regret to inform you that you’ll have to go to law school. Maybe you want to lift the indigent out of poverty. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but a career in business might be the best way to make that happen. There are plenty of college graduates out there living good lives, treading lightly on the planet, and ardently hoping to leave the world better than they found it. We’re looking for those people. There’s nothing wrong with sitting in a room for the rest of your life, reading books for your own self-improvement, but if your goal is really to increase your understanding of the world and make it a better place to live, then I think you’d better continue your education after high school.”
“Rosa Parks increased our understanding of the world and made it a better place to live,” said one of the girls from the corner. She had a dusky gray complexion and beaded cornrows.
“She did indeed,” Portia said, sighing. “I’m not implying that education is the only path to making a contribution. But if contribution is your goal, why would you choose to impede yourself, or limit your ability to make an impact? And consider this, please. A college class can give us a clearer picture than the one we might get sitting alone in that room with our books. For example—and I’m going to hijack your own example, if you don’t mind—Rosa Parks, remarkable as she was, was not the first black American to refuse to give up her seat on public transportation and find herself in a jail cell. And her act was not the basis of the lawsuit that ended segregation on buses. Seven months before Rosa Parks, there was another black woman who was taken to prison for not moving when a white person wanted her seat. Her name was Aurelia Browder, and she filed suit against the city of Montgomery, Alabama. And that’s the lawsuit that struck down segregation, not Parks’s lawsuit. Now,” she said, surveying their subdued, even stricken faces, “have you wandered into the wrong meeting? Am I really here to talk about the civil rights movement and only pretending to try to sell you on the idea of applying to Princeton University? No. The only point I’m making by telling you about Aurelia Browder is that I wouldn’t have known about her myself if I hadn’t taken an African-American history course when I went to college. College is where you go beyond the official version. College is where you read the sources and look past the canon. Now, Rosa Parks was a heroine, no question about it, but who thinks we ought to be just as impressed by Aurelia Browder?”
There were stray nods. A couple of them raised a hand.
“Could you have learned about her on your own? Sure. But you didn’t, did you? In my college class, we read the trial transcripts. We read the contemporary newspaper accounts. Our professor had written a book about Bob Moses. Who was Bob Moses?”
Blank looks.
“Okay. I rest my case. Now, if I’ve convinced you to devote the next four years of your life to higher education, I’d like to please move on to one particular institute of higher education. So if there are no further questions—”
“Actually,” said her antagonist from the couch, “I still don’t understand why you’re here. I mean, isn’t Princeton already competitive? Why do you need more applicants? Or do you want even more people to apply so you can let in an even smaller percentage? I mean, isn’t that the measure of status for elite colleges? That it’s harder to get into your place than Harvard or whatever? Why is it necessary for even more of us to participate in this national hysteria about college admissions?”
It was actually quite an impressive speech, and—as it happened—uncomfortably close to the bone. Portia regarded the girl, saying nothing for a moment. She was thinking: I must get her name. This kid was smart, opinionated, stubborn, and thoroughly relentless. Portia could just imagine her in Congress, not that such an acerbic character could get elected to anything. But a mover and a shaker, definitely: Today Princeton, tomorrow the world.
“I came here,” said Portia, “to let you know about us, so that if you’re considering higher education, you could consider us. Just as we would like to have the opportunity to consider you.”
“Oh, right. You mean you’d like to have the opportunity of considering our applications so you can reject them. What are the chances of getting into Princeton these days?”
“We’re running about one in ten admits,” Portia said tersely. “We have an enormously talented applicant pool, and a very difficult job assembling a class.”
“You mean unless the applicant happens to be really rich and just gave a soccer stadium to the school. Then maybe it’s not so difficult.”
“That’s not accurate,” Portia said, getting seriously annoyed.
“Wouldn’t you agree that the ideal university ought to be a purely need-blind, influence-blind, affluence-blind meritocracy?”
“Ah,” she said dryly. “But aren’t there many ways to define merit? Unless you’d like to make it a strict question of numbers. But should we really be relying on standardized testing? And is it, in fact, standardized when some students can afford expensive courses to raise their scores and others can’t? But let’s suppose you did have a single, reliable testing system, that isn’t going to solve the problem of who’s going to throw the shot put on the track team, and who’s going to play tuba in the marching band, and who’ll be writing the songs for the Triangle Show. Princeton is a community of many parts. We don’t just need molecular biology majors and tennis players. We need Gregorian chanters and break dancers. We need people for the math club and the mime troop and the Nepalese student association. We need somebody to chair the gay Republicans group and somebody to lead the Democrats for Fiscal Responsibility. Now listen,” she told
them. “I could go on talking about Princeton till the cows come home. Literally.” She laughed and was relieved to note a few actual smiles. “But before we go any further, I want you to look at this short film. Afterwards, you may know that Princeton isn’t for you, in which case I’m sure there are chores that need to be done around here. Am I right?” She turned to John.
“Always chores,” he said, looking amused.
“But if you have questions, and some of you might, then we can talk more. Okay?”
She had survived her hazing, she saw. The consensus was: They would now watch the film.
She tried to angle the laptop so that the sun, visibly sinking now at the far end of the field, did not glare across the screen, but even in the sixteen minutes it lasted, the group on the floor first leaned and then shifted, inches, feet, chasing the shadow. She watched them as they watched the students on the small computer screen rhapsodize and crow. She inspected the students of the Quest School, looked at their faces, then at their bodies (alert or drooping, leaning against one another), then at their clothing, which on this closer inspection was impressively varied. There was quite a bit of tie-dye, of course, and T-shirts with band logos, and the inevitable jeans, but there was also an Asian girl in a frilly dress and Mary Janes, a wide-eyed boy with a chestnut-colored forelock wearing a smart jacket and khakis (he would not have appeared out of place at a Deerfield master’s tea). There was a girl in blond pigtails who wore a loose, zip-up jumpsuit with a gas station’s name imprinted on the breast and a name in embroidered cursive: “Frank.” Another girl, plump and pale with a cap of thin red hair, wore a sweater set that might have come from the Talbot’s on Nassau Street, a stone’s throw from Portia’s office.
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