I have been stalking the mailman for the past week or so waiting for a letter to arrive. Back in October Finn applied to a high school here that involved submitting a "portfolio" (you know, his grades from last year, his attendance records, and proof that he had some type of after school involvements/interests) and taking an entrance exam. Now, the night of the testing, I gave him a wonderful pep talk before hand and made sure he knew that the essay portion needed to portray him, to be written in his voice, after all he's an incredibly smart and FUNNY person. "Just be yourself" I said as we parted ways and he was swept up a stairwell with about a billion other hopefuls, while I was left to elbow my way down to the cafeteria and wait it out with about a billion other parents (longest hour of my life).
Apparently the school tested about 1400 students for 385 spots. Now, I know that Finn is super bright and talented and that any school would be lucky to nab him up, but 1100 kids would be getting rejection letters, they ARE in fact getting those letters right about now, and I couldn't help but worry a little that we needed to start thinking about a plan B.
"How was the essay portion?", I asked on the drive home, "what was it about?".
"It was fine, I guess, it asked 'where has reading taken you?' and you only had to write one long, descriptive paragraph".
I allowed myself a big sigh of relief, because I can confidently say without a shadow of doubt that Finn is probably the most well read eighth grader I know, and just as I was starting to perk up a little bit in the driver's seat he interrupted my cozy thoughts with a "but".
"But, I sort of got off topic, like way off topic, while I was writing."
"What do you mean? (nervous pause) Like, how far off topic?"
"Well, I started talking about..........(wait for it).............VIDEO GAMES".
At which point there was a rather lengthy and perhaps uncomfortable silence in the car as I tried to come up with a response. I quickly pulled it together and we joked the rest of the way home about the entire thing, but it definitely added an extra bit of apprehension to the past six week waiting period. Which of course brings me to today. As usual the mailman arrived mid morning and I immediately rushed to the box since I have been expecting a letter from the school for days now, and today it FINALLY came. And what's more, it was an ACCEPTANCE letter!!!!!
I mean, I don't know what you were so worried about, the kid's a genius you know.
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