Getting In: A Novel by Karen Stabiner Page B

hersout. It was always easy to spot Katie’s drafts, because she had scrolled through the font list until she found a sans serif typestyle that she felt better reflected her straightforward personality than the standard Times Roman font.
    I am the fortunate daughter of two people who have taught me so much about hard work, and good work. My father is an attorney-at-law and my mother is a physician, and I have learned from them the value of self-discipline and needing always to do my best.
    Ted started to write “parallel construction” on his notepad, and then he stopped, certain that the teacher who gave Katie As in her AP class, despite syntax like this, would somehow manage to catch the error.
    I have also learned that success is not enough in and of itself, but that I need to use my future success to make a contribution to making the world a better place. This is analogous to what I have already done in high school, where I have been very successful academically (NOTE TO MR. MARSHALL: How soon can I say I’m valedictorian? Grades come out after the early-decision deadline, but I’m pretty sure) and also have made numerous contributions that have nothing to do with my personal life. In the summer before my junior year I went to Guatemala for two weeks to help build houses….
    At a cost, thought Ted, that would have paid for an entire village of houses.
    In the summer before my senior year I went to China to do the same. I will end my high school career with a skill-set that makes me an excellent candidate for a rigorous college program. In addition to my superior academic profile, I have made myself something of a Renaissance woman involved in many different kinds of activities.
    He circled “Renaissance woman,” which must have come from Katie’s mom.
    My mother says that magazines used to talk about “jugglers,” because women had to try to figure out how to raise a family and have a career, and be an attentive wife and an interesting woman all at the same time. Somebody should have asked her how to do it, because she really has it all figured out, and I don’t say that just because she’s my mom. I don’t feel like I need more of her time than I get. She has taught me to look at it a different way. The time I’m alone is when I learn to be independent, to get along by myself, which is going to help me in college and after.
    And my dad has taught me the benefits of what he calls compartmentalizing, which means 100 percent attention to whatever you’re doing at the moment, and then you switch channels and give all your attention to the next project. We joke about channel surfing and our invisible remote controls, but his example has shown me that I can do more because I’m more organized.
    I’m honest enough to say that I’m not sure where the next four years will take me—or maybe, like my dad says, I’m self-confident enough not to need a major to tell me who I am. I could be an attorney or a physician, although my parents have set the bar high. I could combine my parents’ interests and become both an attorney and a physician. In fact, I remind myself not to think just about workingfor a law firm or a company that already exists. What’s the next step from what my parents did? Perhaps I’ll run my own company or succeed in a universe that won’t exist until I create it. I might even run for public office.
    Whatever I end up doing, I have to be all I can be.
    The last line was new. Ted sang the jingle the Army had used for as long as he could remember—“Be. All that you can be. Da da duh duh, in the Army.”—and wondered whether Katie had come up with the line without knowing its source, in which case she was a natural for a career in advertising, or, worse, if she knew where it came from, in which case she could be the first Crestview student to apply to West Point. For a wicked instant, he was tempted to let her use it, but he wrote on his pad, “Admissions officers probably won’t get