I Don’t Know

When I was six, I was convinced I was going to go straight to Harvard Law when I turned eighteen. I didn’t need undergrad, I was a wunderkind who could spell onomatopoeia, ya hear? Onomatopoeia! No one else in Mrs. Uriachi’s first grade class could do that. I was going to go to Harvard Law, become a lawyer, and be President within a decade. I spent a lot of time sitting at the grown ups’ table, trying to understand why they were talking about Iraq and who George Bush was and why any of it mattered. I hated sitting with kids my age, so even when I was forced to sit with at the kids’ table I always trailed the older ones. I wanted people to recognise me, to see that I had all the answers already. When I told people I wanted to go to Harvard, I could almost convince myself I was getting some of that recognition.

Why was I intent on Harvard? There are a lot of potential explanations: the year before, I was living in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a small seaside town about an hour outside of Boston. My dad was in Riyadh (in 2003, at the height of the Iraq invasion – my parents don’t know how lucky they are I had no clue what that meant), and between going to kindergarten at Gerry Elementary and painting in my grandmother’s art studio, which she called Octopus’s Garden for the Beatles song, I spent time with my aunt and uncle and their newborn baby and cat. They were both Ivy League educated, and at the time my uncle was doing some extraordinarily specialised form of neuroscience research at Harvard University. So when I moved overseas to Morocco at the end of that year, Harvard was the only American university I knew, and therefore the only one worthy of my self-assured seven-year-old mind. There’s also the possibility that I saw Legally Blonde during that time period, but I don’t remember having watched it before this year, so unless I’ve got selective amnesia, probably no thanks extended to Elle Woods. There’s also the very real chance that I was just a massive weirdo.

When I was fourteen, I didn’t know where I wanted to go, but I didn’t admit that to anyone. As far as the outside world was concerned, I had a meticulous plan for the rest of my life. I was doing a lot of theatre then, so privately I thought maybe I’d go to the University of the Arts for stage management. A lot of people told me that that’s what I should do, so I just went with it, not ready to let on that I was totally fucking lost. I was so wrapped up in figuring out high school, figuring out who I was, who my friends were, why boys didn’t like me, why it was I kept getting Cs in classes, that I didn’t really give much consideration to anything in the future. Still, when my mom and I visited New York, I was overcome by the desire to do something good, to have all the right answers to do all the right things. For some unknowable reason I thought the only way to do good was by becoming a human rights attorney and working for the United Nations. It was a weird time in my life.

I discovered msnbc that year. I watched it in every moment of my free time until Obama beat Romney, and quickly people started identifying me as the person with all the answers to the politics questions. A month later, our production of Les Miserables went up and closed and suddenly I had a whole lot more time in my life to find more answers. I watched a lot of msnbc. I got in a lot of arguments, made a lot of people mad, but it didn’t matter because I had the right answer. I decided to hell with becoming a lawyer, I wanted to be a journalist so I could always be in the know, and because there were already too many Bs on my report card to make it into Harvard, I would go instead to Boston University.

I spent a lot of time convincing myself BU was the perfect school for me. I had a huge question in my life, and I needed an answer and fast. BU was that answer. I plotted out exactly what classes I would have to take to successfully double major, I ignored the heinous tuition costs and the fact that Boston is a way smaller city than it wants to admit. I visited it in the spring and even though I hated the depressing non-campus campus, I told myself it was perfect for me. I started watching The West Wing around that time and resolved to be like Josh Lyman. I convinced myself I could play “hardball politics” without sacrificing my morals, and that my morals could lack a coherent ideology so long as I worked hard enough and the music swelled at just the right moment.

Over the next couple years I visited a whole bunch of schools: Vassar, GWU, Northeastern, Barnard to name a few. I still wonder if I should’ve applied to Barnard, whether I could’ve been happy there despite the price tag and the lack of freedom to study what I wanted to. But I lived in a suburban hellscape where even my best days were dulled by the reality that everything around me had a thick layer of suck coating it. It was claustrophobic, and even once I could drive there was only so far I could go and I couldn’t justify paying $10 to metro into DC to walk around aimlessly. It felt like a belt was strapped around my chest and every time I tried to take a breath it tightened. I was miserable. My grades were even more miserable and though I kicked ass on my AP exams and SAT, I knew it wasn’t enough to get me where I wanted to go. I was horrified by the thought that for the first time in my life I might not have the answers to the problems popping up around me.

The summer before my junior year, I took classes at NYU. In one of my classes I was only one of two kids not in either their junior or senior year of college and it scared the hell out of me. The classes kicked my ass, I spent more time bunkered down in the Bobst Library at Washington Square than I ever expected to. But still, I thrived in New York, I loved the smell of rotting asphalt and stale cigarette smoke and sewage and weed and the unwashed masses. I felt confidence like I’d never felt before, like I was a whole new person. I laughed loudly, I talked to people I didn’t know, I stayed out late at night and wasn’t scared of anything. I cut my hair and wore outfits that would’ve made me blush at home. I read the Communist Manifesto on a bench in the Village as the humid summer air plastered my bangs to my forehead. I fell in love and out of love and thought that I would never again be as happy as I was then. For once, I didn’t need answers because there were no questions. I was free.

When I came back to reality, I gave up any hope of applying to colleges in America. My grades, though not horrific, wouldn’t get me into any schools that my elitist ego would be comfortable with. I applied to British schools instead, where they only wanted the 5s I’d scored on my AP exams and my SAT scores, not my GPA. I applied to Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford because my parents wanted me to. I applied to the London School of Economics because Mick Jagger went there. I applied to King’s College London even though they wouldn’t let me double up history and politics. I applied to the University of Edinburgh twice for history and history and politics and wrote in my journal that I would sacrifice ever falling in love if it meant I could go to Edinburgh. It was nice to be the one asking the questions for once. It was even nicer that that question was “yes or no?”

I submitted my applications on October 15th, and ten days later I got my first answer, I had been accepted to King’s College London. I was staying after school with the feminist club when I found out, and I cried on the phone when I told my mom, barely able to accept that a college would want me, the ADD-riddled kid who felt like she was drowning in the world around her. I played a lot of solitaire while I waited for my response from Edinburgh. I suck at solitaire, but it was dull enough to keep me from questioning myself. On November 10th, I got into Edinburgh for history and politics. I was in class, but went to the hallway to call my mom. I didn’t cry, I barely reacted. It felt like a dream, like the other shoe had yet to drop and it was going to drop hard. Still, I couldn’t contain my laughter for the rest of the day, I had the answer I’d always waited for.

I got rejected from Oxford on Thanksgiving, reading the email while my dad and I watched Braveheart, laying on the floor of our basement, the volume on full blast. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but for the first time ever I didn’t really care. I apologised to my parents when I told them, but I know they weren’t deluded enough to think I could get in. I got rejected from LSE sometime around then, too, in the early morning before I went to school. I deleted the email and told my mom nonchalantly on my way out the door. I took it as a sign I was never going to be Mick Jagger. I didn’t really care.

As the year went on, I became more and more infatuated with the idea of socialism. Bernie Sanders was running for president, the air felt electric, even in my muted little town, and my acceptance into Edinburgh taught me that anything was possible. I started questioning everything I thought I knew, and while at times it made me feel sick to my stomach, it mostly exhilarated me, like I was finally able to go for the forbidden fruit. The more I read about Scotland, the more in love I became with it and with radical politics. When we visited over Christmas the sheer success of their social programs knocked me on my ass. I’m sure the honeymoon period with Scotland will end eventually, but it left its mark on me: I’m now a proud pinko.

When I think back on the seven year old who wanted to go to Harvard, it feels like I’m remembering an alien life. I wanted so desperately to impress people, to be the most precocious kid possible, I wonder how much of my childhood I sacrificed in that pursuit. I’m glad I was so indecisive about college for so long, I’m glad I had no idea who I was, glad that I still have no idea. Sure, I’m not proud I didn’t make the grades for Harvard, or for BU or Barnard, but I can’t say I regret it. What time I could’ve spent doing homework I instead wasted on reading about stuff I cared about, on politics and history and the places and people public high school would never teach me about. I’m glad I was so miserable living in my hometown, because I’ll never let myself feel like that again.

I guess I have a long road ahead of me, plenty of more opportunities to change my mind about anything and everything. Maybe I will go to Harvard Law one day, maybe I’ll find a room where I’m the only one who can spell onomatopoeia. I’m not sure, but I don’t know that I want to be. For now, I’m okay with not having any of the answers. I’ll be fine.