{"id":10238,"date":"2016-09-11T13:57:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-11T18:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=10238"},"modified":"2016-09-11T13:57:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-11T18:57:14","slug":"book-review-where-you-go-is-not-who-youll-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=10238","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pbcover-whereyougo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Are you in the midst of the college planning process as a student or as a parent? \u00a0Do you see those days on the horizon? \u00a0Do you know someone who is in the midst of it? \u00a0Run…don’t walk…to the nearest bookstore and pick up a copy of Frank Bruni’s \u00a0Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be<\/a><\/em> for yourself and at least one to give away. \u00a0To take this even a step further from a biblical perspective,\u00a0Philippians 1:6 “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”<\/p>\n

As a Christian, I remember in recent years standing with my husband before our church family to dedicate our daughter and then, a few years later, our son to being raised in a Christian home where we will point our children to Christ first in all that we say and do. \u00a0So many of us have enjoyed the blessing of raising our children in a community of faith that proclaims clearly that “God has a plan for you!” \u00a0Then…we all go nuts and forget that when it comes time for the college planning process. \u00a0 One of my seniors last year, when asked where he was headed to college, humbly…but boldly…claimed “I am 100% certain that I will get into the college that God intends for me to attend.” \u00a0What a peace!<\/p>\n

This book is a great resource to keep close by in the college planning process because it keeps our eye on the prize…college is a season of life. \u00a0It is a part of what the Lord is working out in the life of someone roughly 18-22…but it’s not the WHOLE story. \u00a0How quickly we forget that God is in charge of every minute detail of our lives. \u00a0Ephesians 2:10 reminds us:\u00a0“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” \u00a0So many times kids look at rejection and feel that God has forgotten then, the same God of Luke 12:7 who loves us so much that He reminds us “Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”<\/p>\n

Take heart high school student. \u00a0Take heart parents, friends, teachers, counselors, whomever is involved in this mania that college admissions has become…God is still on His throne and His plan is still the best. \u00a0You can never go wrong to seek Him first and then see all the things that He has added (Matthew 6:33).<\/p>\n

I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…<\/p>\n

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  • The main, lasting relevance of Indiana, he told me, was the way it had turned him into a bolder, surer person, allowing him to discover and nurture a mettle that hadn\u2019t been teased out before. \u00a0\u201cI got to be the big fish in a small pond,\u201d he said. \u00a0Now, if he wanted to, he could swim with the sharks.<\/li>\n
  • A pattern emerged. \u00a0\u201cI applied for things fearlessly,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause I knew now that I was worth something even if I wasn\u2019t accepted.\u201d \u00a0Rejection was arbitrary. \u00a0Rejection was survivable.<\/li>\n
  • \u201cI never would have had the strength, drive, or fearlessness to take such a risk if I hadn\u2019t been rejected so intensely before,\u201d she told me. \u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s a beauty to that kind of rejection, because it allows you to find the strength within.\u201d<\/li>\n
  • A sort of mania has taken hold, and its grip seems to grow tighter and tighter.<\/li>\n
  • For too many parents and their children, getting into a highly selective school isn\u2019t just another challenge, just another goal. \u00a0A yes or no from Amherst or Dartmouth or Duke or Northwestern is seen as the conclusive measure of a young person\u2019s worth, a binding verdict on the life that he or she has led up until that point, an incontestable harbinger of the successes or disappointments to come. \u00a0Winner or loser: this is when the judgement is made. \u00a0This is the great, brutal culling. \u00a0What madness. \u00a0And what nonsense.<\/li>\n
  • College has no monopoly on the ingredients for professional success or for a life well lived.<\/li>\n
  • College is a singular opportunity to rummage through and luxuriate in ideas, to give your brain a vigorous workout and your soul a thorough investigation, to realize how very large the world is and to contemplate your desired place in it. \u00a0And that\u2019s being lost in the admissions mania, which sends the message that college is a sanctum to be breached\u2014a border to be crossed\u2014 rather than a land to be inhabited and tilled for all it\u2019s worth.<\/li>\n
  • Those last years of high school are just one short stretch of a life with many passages before it and many to come, plenty of ups and plenty of downs, and intelligence is only part of what enables you, at that time, to walk through certain doors.<\/li>\n
  • “My fear is that these kids are always going to be evaluating their self-worth in terms of whether they hit the next run society has placed in front of them at exactly the time that society has placed it. \u00a0And that\u2019s dangerous, because you\u2019re going to slip and fall in your life.\u201d \u00a0NJ Governor Chris Christie<\/li>\n
  • There\u2019s no equivalence between straight A\u2019s in school and sharp professional tools, and that\u2019s one of the many reasons to question the obsession with colleges that admit only students with the highest GPA\u2019s.<\/li>\n
  • The college admissions office is no longer a mere screening committee. \u00a0It\u2019s a ruthlessly efficient purveyor of Ivory Tower porn.<\/li>\n
  • If you\u2019re a parent who\u2019s pushing your kids relentlessly and narrowly toward one of the most prized schools in the country and you think that you\u2019re doing them a favor, you\u2019re not. \u00a0You\u2019re in all probability setting them up for heartbreak, and you\u2019re imparting a questionable set of values.<\/li>\n
  • Just how well does all the fluffing work? \u00a0People who are familiar with the admissions process and aren\u2019t financially investing in believing that you can buy a meaningful advantage say that the screeners of applications have grown savvy to, and cynical about, all the flamboyant charity work; all the leadership positions in self-started organizations with memberships of three; all the summers spent learning Swahili; all the soul-baring essays about family melodramas as fulcrums for personal growth.<\/li>\n
  • \u201cI think US News and World Report will go down as one of the most destructive things that ever happened to higher education.\u201d \u00a0Adam Weinberg, President of Denison University<\/li>\n
  • \u201cMake no mistake\u201d, he wrote. \u00a0\u201cThe publication of college rankings is a business enterprise that capitalizes on anxiety about college admissions\u201d Jeffrey Brenzel, former dean of admissions at Yale<\/li>\n
  • Now more than ever, college needs to be an expansive adventure, propelling students toward unplumbed territory and untested identities rather than indulging and flattering who they already are. \u00a0And students, along with those of us who purport to have meaningful insights for them, need to insist on that.<\/li>\n
  • \u201cIt\u2019s interesting to think about how this is shaping America. \u00a0If our elite is to some extent being formed by this powerful experience of frenzied admissions, does it suggest that we\u2019re creating a culture in which the sale is more important than the product?\u201d \u00a0Anthony Marx, former president of Amherst college<\/li>\n
  • \u201cIf you are extremely smart buy you\u2019re only partially engaged, you will be outperformed, and you should be, by people who are sufficiently smart but fully engaged.\u201d \u00a0Britt Harris, former chief executive of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund and 1980 graduate of Texas A&M<\/li>\n
  • Counselors said that mothers and fathers are the principal agents of the frenzy, which is the apotheosis of their efforts to micromanage every last moment of their children\u2019s lives and protect them from all injury, especially to their self-esteem. \u00a0If they\u2019ve been run-of-the-mill helicopter parents up until they start plotting college, they become Black Hawks at that point.<\/li>\n
  • The mania\u2019s focus on such a limited number of acceptable outcomes, coupled with its attention to minutely detailed instructions for achieving them, suggests that life yields to meticulous mapping and plotting.<\/li>\n
  • Hard work shouldn\u2019t be framed, or thought of, only in terms of a specifically defined goal and merely as a humdrum bridge to some imagined promised land. \u00a0Hard work bears the ripest, sweetest fruit when it\u2019s approached as an act of passion, a lifetime habit, a renewable resource.<\/li>\n
  • One of the most potentially meaningful aspects of the college admissions process is, in fact, rejection. \u00a0And that\u2019s partly because college is, or should be, disruptive. \u00a0It\u2019s about becoming a new person, not letting the ink dry on who, at seventeen or eighteen, you already are. \u00a0In that sense defeat can be a springboard. \u00a0And figuring out how to rebound from disappointment is infinitely more beneficial than any diploma.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Are you in the midst of the college planning process as a student or as a parent? \u00a0Do you see those days on the horizon? \u00a0Do you know someone who is in the midst of it? \u00a0Run…don’t walk…to the nearest bookstore and pick up a copy of Frank Bruni’s \u00a0Where You Go Is Not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,25,37,12,16,28,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-education","category-eli","category-emma","category-family","category-integrity","category-north-cobb-christian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}