“I pick my way through the rest of the email, as if there might be some other piece of information I'd missed, some final thread of hope. But all I see is further confirmation of what I've always known, deep down in the core of me.
In recent years . . . faced with increasingly
difficult decisions . . . In addition, most.
candidates present strong personal and
exctracurricular credentials . . .
I'm simply not that good. Not in academics. Not in extracurriculars. Not as a student, or a daughter, or a human. It doesn't matter if I crammed my brain to the point of breaking formula and dates, threw myself into my classes, painted until the skin on my hands blistered and split open. Here is incontrovertible proof. Something in me is missing. Lacking.”