College rejections are rolling in for many kids across America and if you can hear a collective sobbing, it’s real. For many teens, this is their first “failure,” especially the ones who went above and beyond to get SAT tutors and write essays late into the night. Some schools required videos, and when watching samples on You Tube of kids who got in, you wondered if someone in the family didn’t run production at 20th Century Fox. The truth is, every kid is incredible, but college admissions have gotten over the top competitive and selective. Just like the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the bar to enter Ivy League schools has risen so high, you see a big divide. And none of it makes a lot of sense. No admissions person can predict at all who will be the one to provide the college the best legacy. The teen who was the head Math Olympiad could have a complete mental breakdown being away from home, when the teen who was a summer camp counselor and got A’s could be the next state senator.
Kids today are also way more tuned into the whole college application process than I was way back when. I squeaked by with enough A’s my senior year to get noticed by one college - Emerson - and I was dropped off day one sight unseen. Now the world is one of virtual tours, and admissions podcasts, and Ask the Teachers, and interviews with alumni. I didn’t work hard at all to get into college. I auditioned with You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone and I guess I nailed it, or Emerson needed freshman bodies. I will never know because no one talked about stats. I was happy and I went, and then I slaved away at three jobs just to stay there. I am not sure at any point I felt like I had won the lottery at all in college. In fact, I woke up to reality in college, where now colleges are positioned as almost like a young adult country club. No admission team can predict anyone will thrive or be successful on a campus from a few essays and grades.
It’s hard to watch someone you love be rejected, especially when you know that colleges are getting 50,000 applications. It is hard to watch them be sad when you know the college they did get into is really amazing, and they will thrive there. You can’t stop someone grieving a dream that dies. They have to do that on their own time. Losing a hope one clung onto is painful but I think being disappointed young is a good learning experience. I just hope young people don’t look at getting rejected from colleges as giving up. I commend teens going for it with a gusto. I wish I had applied half the energy to sitting still with my dream long enough to hear all the right answers and direction of patience as I put towards finding weed on a Saturday night at 11 PM.
When I was making movies, while I always had a passion for what I did, I had one film that I wrote where I really went for a dream. I got prodded awake out of a lull of the belief I was never going to be more than just average by this film. I turned that hope for success into a frenzied impatience. THIS would be the year I would be noticed. I was tired of not being noticed. We were finishing the rough cut of the movie and had been given an insight that it could be perfect for the Sundance Film Festival that year, but we were behind. Back when, exporting a movie onto VHS from an editing system was a long tedious effort . We finally finished and had to get the tape to Sundance by 10 AM the next morning. I recall literally running down a tarmac to an Overnight Express carrier that cost us over $100 so we could go after the golden ticket. I was all high on the rush of possibility, while also having a voice in my head, back deep that suggested maybe this was not the way to go about this dream. We did not get accepted to the festival and I was dashed. I was chasing accolades instead of leaning into how it would feel to share a wonderful film with many people. I got that chance a year later when the film screened at the Goteberg Film festival in Sweden and we got a standing ovation. I didn’t care about being noticed or known by then. I was just thrilled to hear the clapping.
When You Are In Your Head:
I needed to get away from all the despair about college applications in my house so I went to see wildflowers an hour outside Los Angeles. I posted the video above. If you turn the sound up, you can hear the bees buzzing and also when I pan, the sound of the wind. It was magical being on a long road with wispy blocks of wildflowers on each side. I saw two hummingbirds drinking nectar, one with a metallic blue belly and the other with a shock red. I was transfixed, calmed and understood completely that none of what we think is important matters if we can remember to literally smell and look at the wild flowers.
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