Other People's Good News

It's been a crazy busy week and my laptop's been down so when I would normally blog at night cozy in bed with my pj's on, I haven't had the option available to me. What did I do this week that kept me so busy? Monday through Wednesday, I was a student member of the admissions committee for my Master's Program. This involved carefully reviewing all 54 applicant files, rating them in various categories, and then writing appropriate comments.

On Tuesday I had to leave my admissions work for a few hours since I got a last-minute notice to attend a planning meeting for a political committee I had agreed to be on. As I was leaving the meeting Tuesday, I half-jokingly said I was looking for a paid internship. When I returned to school I ended up having to stay there most of the night to finish the applications after my evening class got out.

Wednesday the admissions committee met, and once we'd finished reviewing all the files and coming to consensus on each applicant, I spent the afternoon calling the students that had been accepted. This was a really happy experience for me. There's nothing like making a bunch of phone calls to give people good news. The best was a girl I didn't even get to reach. I had her home number and she was still away at school. When I asked her mother for her school number, she asked who I was and I told her I was on the admissions committee, so all sly-like, she says, "How's she doing?"

I told her I was calling to let her daughter know she's been accepted but that I wanted to speak to her personally so I could go over a few things with her, and the mother started screaming at me, "OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! ARE YOU SURE? I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" I reassured her that it was in fact true and asked her again for her daughter's phone number, which she assured me she'd give me just as soon as she told her husband. "JOHN," she screamed, "SHE GOT INTO GRAD SCHOOL!"

And then John was screaming with her: "OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! SHE REALLY GOT IN? I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!" (and so on, and so on, for a good five minutes.) When she finally calmed down enough to give me her daughter's phone number and I called the daughter, I just got her voicemail, which was quite a let-down after the scream fest I got from her parents. I felt like I told them they'd won a million dollars.

And I know that this sounds trite, but I realized that the time I put into that admissions committee, and the decisions we made, they changed people's lives. Val called this one guy to tell him he got in and was getting a Graduate Assistantship (meaning free tuition and insurance and a paid job) and he told her that he was now going to propose to his girlfriend that night. These people, their futures just changed because of a little bit of time we all put into considering them for our school. I really can't wait to meet some of them next Fall.

I felt so happy Wednesday night, coming home and thinking how my life had changed last Summer when I heard the news that I had been accepted and knowing that I was taking one side of a fork in the road that I knew would lead to good things.

There's nothing like the moment when you realize a hope or a dream is actually about to happen for you.