The Handbook / Chapter 11
Life Story | Yasmin
Chapter 11
Youth is a superpower. Your passion and vitality inspire us. We envy your energy. Working alongside extraordinary young people, I’m transported back to a time when the future felt limitless and full of possibility. It’s a gift to the rest of us.
I often think about icebreakers, the enormous seagoing vessels that lead arctic expeditions by breaking up thick sheets of ice. What makes them effective are 1) a pointed bow and 2) tremendous thrust. Eliminate either component and they don’t work. When both combine they open the way for others to follow. The world ahead of you may sometimes seem like a frozen sea, impossible to cross. Your energy is your thrust. Your passion is your point. What do you dream of doing? Your topic can hint at it.
You may not know yet. That’s not uncommon. With so much of the world still to experience, you’re never far from a sense of discovery. The excitement you bring to learning new things is one of your most appealing traits. Your writing can remind us of this.
I savor discovery, too. When I’m paired with a new student, I enjoy sleuthing out who this stranger might be and unlocking the secret of their potential. Seeing the light of self-awareness flicker on in them, I marvel at the wattage. Sometimes the process can be lengthy and circuitous, but it’s always worth it.
With Yasmin, it takes all of a second. From the moment our first zoom connects, she radiates such an unmistakable life force I know instantly I need only stay out of the way for her to get anywhere she wants to go.
She seems totally at ease as we make our introductions. We’ve been brought together through a non-profit I helped found. She lives with her parents and younger brother in a small apartment in an east coast city. In the background, I can see her mother preparing dinner. I ask Yasmin to introduce us. It seems rude not to. She uncouples her earbuds and summons her mom who walks obligingly to her daughter’s side. Yasmin translates as neither her mom’s English nor my Spanish will cut it. I say how proud she must be to have such a daughter. She tells me how grateful she is that I’ll be in the mix.
No two lives, nor life stories, are the same. Most have enough in common with our own that we can relate despite the differences. However, some come with a history so unusual that it almost demands to be told. Though she recounts it matter-of-factly, Yasmin’s is remarkable, beginning with her parents’ working with the horses at the race track less than a mile away. Dad is a groomer and her mom a hot walker, the person tasked with cooling off the horses after a workout. They have performed these jobs 50 weeks a year, beginning before their children were born.
As young immigrant parents, their jobs provided a lifeline. In addition to their salaries, the track owners provide daycare and additional resources aimed at easing the pressure on young families. Yasmin’s parents take full advantage. Their daughter, as she will describe in a moment, spent the first 5 years of her life, for those same 50 weeks a year, being looked after in the nursery at the racetrack. One detail she will omit is the tiny room across from the horse barn she would sometimes occupy when the nursery couldn’t accommodate her. Perched atop a mattress, she, a toddler, would watch episodes of CyberChase on an old mini TV with rabbit eared antennae. She would receive a stern warning not to touch the space heater lest she burn herself. She listened.
To call her a force of nature is not hyperbole. Yasmin brings everything to every moment. Her confidence is unshakeable. She seems without ego or shame. Every question is met with equanimity. You get the feeling you couldn’t knock her off balance if you tried, not that you’d want to. What you want to do is align yourself with whatever she wants to achieve and start pitching in.
Her family has never wanted for food or shelter but she knows about getting by with little. She’s far more familiar with the public library than the local bookstore. You would never know the deprivation she has experienced. She much prefers the library, she offers cheerfully. Everyone there is so helpful. My guess is they’re all on team Yasmin, too. You go, girl. Make us proud.
I will never, and I won’t here, compare my students nor my level of commitment to them. I can honestly say that I try to give everything I have to each student. But I rooted hard for Yasmin from early on and I still do. I never hold a student responsible for the conditions in which they’ve grown up. Children of affluent parents deserve my best effort no less than kids like Yasmin. But when you’ve gone without a thousand niceties and still think life is a really swell bargain, you will have earned my respect and admiration.
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS | YASMIN
MIX OF EXTROVERT & INTROVERT
CAUTIOUS
CONTROLLING
DESCRIBED AS TOO NICE
NON-CONFRONTATIONAL
CONSIDERATE
STUBBORN / DETERMINED
FEAR OF FAILURE
HIGH EXPECTATIONS / DO I DESERVE SUCCESS?
RULE FOLLOWER
ACHIEVEMENT ORIENTED
ORGANIZED
TALKATIVE
Remember our discussion about personal qualities? Yasmin is off the charts. When the kid with the least has the sunniest outlook, look no further. I would pay to audit her freshman seminar just to witness her offer counterpoint to some snarky trust fund baby.
When I ask a student what they’re interested in pursuing, I am ready to hear their answer in perspective. I recognize it's hard to know at 17 what you’ll be doing at 40. I didn’t know at 50 what I’d be doing at 60. Nearly half of the female students I worked with in south LA were set on a career in veterinary medicine. They’d write about their pet hamsters and I’d be sure to be supportive and make sure they knew the academic prerequisites. Since I brought it up, only about 400 veterinarians are minted each year. The great majority of those who start out thinking they’ll be one of them ends up in some other field.
So, I’m ready for some equally idealistic prognosticating as I pose the question to her.
Civil engineering, Yasmin replies.
I had not seen it coming. In fact, I have never had anyone say it ever. Later she would write:
“Specifically a Project Manager. The role consists of mapping out the plan for each request, overseeing, monitoring, and focusing on the whole but specifically the quality, time and cost each component requires. They are responsible for meeting all requirements not only in safety but also all other project specifications”.
She has really thought this through. Equally impressive is the fact that her college list reflects this—it features only colleges offering undergraduate degrees in the field. I ask if she might like to be my counselor.
I wonder if she has similarly already settled on a topic for her personal statement. No, she says, but she’s eager to knock around a few ideas. The first is how athletics, being on a team specifically, teaches us about life. She runs through a few lessons she learned on the field that later applied more widely. Certainly a feasible choice.
Next up, wealth inequality. She’s armed with some data— the 5 richest people on earth have doubled their worth since 2020 while the poorest got poorer. I ask if, given her modest beginnings, she’s ready to contrast her family’s financial health with a billionaire’s. We put it on hold.
We rotate through volleyball, technology, summer programs, and the importance of character. She’s interested in everything. I ask her as a joke if she has time to sleep. That’s when she blurts out the first two lines of her eventual personal statement.
PERSONAL STATEMENT | YASMIN
I can’t sleep in. I’ve never been able to.
The second I wake up, a list appears in front of my eyes: What did I leave unfinished yesterday? What can I expect today? My first class isn’t until 10 but I’m still wide awake. You see, I’ve got a lot to do.
My inability to sleep normal hours may be due to the fact that my parents, who work at ####### racetrack, used to wake me for daycare at 4:00am. From infancy until I was 5 years old, they would bundle my brother and me into snowsuits on cold winter mornings and stroller us down the sidewalk in order to get to work by 5:00am. My mom would drape a plastic cover over the stroller to keep the wind out. It sounded like I was in a muffled room. To this day, I still don’t like the sound of plastic crinkling.
I was allowed to resume my slumber at daycare, but I didn’t. I was an active child. Returning to sleep wasn’t as interesting somehow as building shapes with blue magnetic pieces. It felt good running my hands through the multi-colored carpet which was adorned with foot-tall numbers and letters. I entertained myself by tracing the figures with my fingers. When the other children napped in kindergarten, I stared at the ceiling and counted the seconds.
When I entered 1st grade, I aged out of daycare and my mom had to drop me at a friend’s house before 5:00 am to occupy the hours before school. It was dark and silent when I was led into the living room. My mom’s friend would go back to bed and remind me that I could help myself to something in the kitchen if I wanted. I would turn on PBS’s Cyberchase, the sound low so only I could hear it. I watched three kids and a turkey fight a cyber-villain until the family woke up.
Maybe the reason I can’t go back to sleep is that I’m so excited about the future. I feel annoyed with myself when I waste time. In seventh grade, I found introductory Italian easy, often finishing my lessons with time to spare. While my classmates put their heads down or talked, curiosity would come over me. I would approach the teacher’s desk and examine piles of incomplete examinations intended for his older students. Eventually he’d offer one to me. Walking back to my desk, I felt like I was holding the future.
I liked talking to adults. It made me feel smart and mature. Even though I didn’t understand all the vocabulary, what I could grasp were the issues they found important. It was like a road map. Being able to follow and add to a conversion I absolutely did not fully understand was a kind of intellectual validation.
I’m excited about the future but I’m in no rush to get there. I like my life. This morning I woke up at 6 and when I realized there wasn’t school, I laid my head back down on the pillow and slept to 7. After breakfast, I completed two homework assignments, but I recalled a resolution I made to myself last summer. I promised to pay more attention to social obligations. To make more time for my friends than I may have in the past. They encourage me to attend school events like Senior Sunrise and the Class BBQ and I’m always happy when I do. These things only happen once in your life and if you miss it you can’t ever get it back.
I don’t count the seconds anymore. I make sure every second counts.
End.
By the time she finished writing I had gotten to know her family better. I was struck how parental love makes up for just about any shortfall a child may experience.
Contrary to my warning to avoid writing a biographical sketch in chapter 8, I advised her to include some of her life history. I believe it helps the reader understand the grit she exhibits daily. There may be aspects of your own life story that merit mention in your essay. If parts of your personality, life choices, or overall philosophy can only be explained by what you’ve been through, then take us through it. Show us the hidden treasure in your past adventures.
When you read about Yasmin, only 5 years-old at the time, spending 2 silent predawn hours in a neighbor’s living room, what do you feel? Do you wonder how you would have dealt with a similar situation? Does it make you feel better acquainted with the writer? I have no doubt her parents would have preferred overseeing their child themselves. It helps us understand the logistics necessary for the family to function every day.
Something else hidden in her writing is her emotional intelligence. She knew, although maybe not consciously, that her eventual progress would be linked to her connections to others outside her family. She liked talking to adults. I think what she felt was their fascination with this precocious child. She acted on the positive reinforcement she received from them. Each interaction set in motion her receptivity to the next. She believed in the good and made it true.
It explains her openness to our working together. She perceived me as more opportunity than threat. She shared her transcript and it seemed reasonable to think she would be admitted to her dream school. She opted, like so many students of the Covid generation, to skip standardized testing.
I am acutely aware of a tendency in some students to drive themselves too hard. Working so many hours that it’s necessary to forgo a social life or risk your personal health is a real threat. And you, dear reader, should know that those making the admission decisions worry about this too. They know that the very criteria they apply to decision making can breed a compulsive and unhealthy applicant pool. They’re aware of the hypercompetitive environment in some high schools and the behaviors it encourages. While they will always reward academic achievement, they will want to see evidence of a candidate’s nonacademic engagement. Please don’t hear this as encouragement to game your resume with activities showing your softer side. Hear this instead— it is never necessary to sacrifice your personal and mental health in the name of achievement.
Follow times you couldn’t care more with times you couldn’t care less.
Yasmin and I had this conversation a few times. I related stories of undergraduates who were overly driven and couldn't moderate it. The burnout is real. There is a physical and mental threshold that must be acknowledged and respected. Yasmin confided in me a promise she made to herself to nurture her relationships and make time for . . . wasting it.
That essay gave me all the feels, as the youths say.