Embracing Kumquat-itude

Claire-Adele is a senior and applying to college.

I can't wait for this whole thing to be over.

She is so stressed out and worried about it in a way that I never was and therefore cannot relate. I think I'll be the only parent who will be happy the fall they send their kid off to college. I won't be happy because I'll be kicking my daughter out of the house, but because it means the entire college admissions, rejection and acceptance process will finally be over.

This morning while I was making biscuits for breakfast, Claire-Adele came downstairs. She told me one of her college applications asks a few simple questions:

What books have you read in the past year for class that you have liked?
What books have you read for fun that you liked?
What media or publications do you read?

Those seem like a good way to quickly learn about a potential student. This college might think you are what you read. Are you curious? Serious? Funny?

Claire-Adele is a news junkie and followed last year's presidential election closely. While she was at camp for a month in the summer of 2016, I was expected to print out and mail articles about the election to her from a variety of news sources. "For the media, I am going to put down the New York Times and Cosmopolitan."

"That's fine, but what about the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal?"

"I don't want to list those. I don't agree with them all of the time," she said.

"You don't have to agree with what you read. In fact, it is good to read things you disagree with, that challenge your assumptions."

"Nah," she said.

"What about the books?"

"I am going to out down Hillary's new book," she said.

"Great," I said. "What else?"

"I can't think of anything," she said.

"You spend hours reading," I said. "Just put down what you read, even if it is Harry Potter for the fifteenth time or Susan Mallory* or whatever."

"I don't know. I did read Nicholas Sparks," she said. "But I can't put that down."

"But you have read other stuff. You read all of the time," I said. She drifted off to something else, and that was the end of the conversation. We've had other conversations of a similar ilk. In this college admissions process, it seems Claire-Adele's goal is to make herself as vanilla and boring as possible. She wants to leave her favorite activity, Sports Boosters--the art club that makes all of the spirit signs around the school--off her applications.

"Why?" I asked.

"It is too hard to explain what the club does, and it isn't that interesting," she said.

"But it is you," I said. She didn't reply.

Later this morning, Carla asked me how the college admissions process was going, and I told her about my conversations with Claire-Adele.

"The college admissions committees are making a fruit salad when they pick their incoming classes," I said. "They get tons of apples, but they need strawberries, raspberries, bananas, and oranges. Claire-Adele is a little odd, but in a good way. She isn't an apple. She's a kumquat, and I wish she would embrace her kumquat-ness, but no. She wants to be an apple."

Carla nodded and listened. One of her kids is a papaya, so she knew where I was coming from. I suppose it is hard for kids who are different to embrace that, even if it is what makes them special.

* Claire-Adele wrote some short fiction romances for a class once, and they were great. Susan Mallory writes romances and has published 25 million copies or some crazy number of her books. I think Claire-Adele should get in the romance writing business. But no, she doesn't want my opinion.