The day I got admitted to Harvard
My acceptance e-mail from Harvard was sent to my junk folder.
My acceptance e-mail from Harvard was sent to my junk folder. My stomach looped itself into increasingly nauseating and intricate knots as whispers of other students being deferred or rejected floated through the hallways. Why hadn’t I heard anything?? I refreshed my email for the 70th time. I smiled. I laughed and shrugged and said not yet as my friends asked for news.
Only a few of us had applied early decision. News of one classmate’s being deferred hit me harder than the rest. Him and I were often chosen to give tours and talks together to potential faculty and donors as the exemplification of the quality of student our small private school could produce. It made sense. We were both honor students, varsity athletes, and members of student council. However, all I could think of in that moment was that he was white; a beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde haired, white man while I was a girl; my skin, my hair, my eyes all dark. For every academic lesson I learned at my high school I also learned, and re-learned, that being a black girl made me undesirable, one-dimensional, shameful, un-relatable. Everything seized inside me as hope rushed out of me. If they didn’t want HimÔ they would never want me. Not Harvard. I started thinking of contingency plans.
Ducking through the halls, I made a b-line for my counselor’s office as soon as my day ended. Her kind, strong eyes looked at me expectantly as I gingerly pushed her door open. “I don’t know!” I burst out, nearly in tears, suddenly feeling all of the fear and shame I had been packing away throughout the day. “It’s okay, did you check the junk folder?”
I think I opened my email in slow motion. I noticed my hands were shaking a little bit…my whole body was shivering. My heart was racing. I tried to tamp down any hope daring to rise up in my chest. I steeled myself for the “unfortunately”. There in my junk folder was an email from Harvard University admissions office, and in that email the word “Congratulations!” I froze. “I got in.” It was a quite succinct statement that came from my lips, but as I met eyes with a woman so dear to me and saw the pride and joy blooming in her strikingly blue-eyes, I yelled “I GOT IN!”. She grabbed me. We jumped. We laughed. She reminded me to breathe. She never had a doubt in her mind.
I walked out of her office, feeling both bigger and lighter than ever. I saw my the few black students at our school: my best friends, my squad, my people, and this time when their eyes inquired, I beamed back at them. There was tackling and laughing and hugging. It did not escape us that my black female body was coming out of that place and going to the Harvard University. I was the only one. They were so proud. We were so proud. The moment was pregnant with meaning and importance for all of us.
Recently, almost 4 years later to the day, I learned about my best friend’s self-described worst day of high school. The school day following the day I got in. Her friends, our friends said, “you know she didn’t deserve that right?” “he deserved to get in more than she did” “do you know how hard he worked”. They, as I had only a few days before, forgot the similarities in our resume’s and instead thought of his blue-eyes and his blonde hair. I know why she never told me and that in doing so I know she carried some of the burden for me so that I could arrive in Cambridge with my head held high. It is this act of love I call to mind whenever I feel doubt creeping in, and I am also reminded of a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.”
Ellery is a content creator at Mascot. She is studying Neurobiology at Harvard University.
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