College Essays Are DONE!

As of this exact moment, Jordan is finished applying to college. We agree that we both feel like barfing! The last one ended up being the first choice. University of Chicago. I have to agree that it is my first choice as well... it's the closest to home! She also applied to NYU, Vassar, Wesleyan, UC Berkeley (Yay Nikko... right?), UCLA, U of Washington, and U of Oregon.

She has done such a great job getting all of these essays done and all of the work and applications done. I'm amazed. I harped on her for so many years to be "self-motivated," and during one heated interaction with me, she admitted that she didn't even know what "self-motivated" meant. Well I think she figured it out!

The last essay she wrote was one of the best ones she wrote. I'm so proud. I just have to share some of it with you.

This is an excerpt from Jordan's college essay for admission to the University of Chicago. The essay is related to advice given by the late poet Rainer Maria Rilke, "At present you need to live the question." It is awesome to see an eighteen year old perspective on things I am still attempting to put in a category.

"My family recently adopted two children, ages eight and ten, from an orphanage in Ethiopia. Going to Africa and bringing these children into our home and family has been monumental and confusing. To this day, nearly a year after traveling to Ethiopia, I am still not able to quite articulate what the trip meant to me. It has been frustrating to try to answer the question, "What did you think of Africa?" because of my inability to draw any concrete conclusions from my experience. After countless efforts to try and write about both the trip to Africa and adopting children, I have decided to simply be aware of its immense value and stop searching so feverishly for answers about what it means to me. I do not know what it means to adopt children, visit a third-world country, or watch a family completely change. As Rilke says in his Letters to a Young Poet, "Most experiences are un-sayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered..." However, I am aware of the experience's immense value and profound influence on my life. I look forward to the journey ahead for my family as we live the question and patiently try to live our way into answers."

WOW.