Alien to Me

~ Clarissa

Words can’t describe how incredibly off-putting I find the author of this tweet:

This whole approach to life is making me want to vomit. The applicant (whether real or apocryphal) and the man gushing over him are very unpleasant people.

Horrible, nasty individuals who are eating up everything that’s good in the world.

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Published by Clarissa

13 thoughts on “Alien to Me”

  1. “Horrible, nasty individuals who are eating up everything that’s good in the world.”

    While I may agree with your sentiment, please explain. I’m intrigued.

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    1. I too would be interested in an explanation. The vibe I get from the guy, is that his business is aimed at upper-middle-class to rich, some social layer where everyone can realistically expect to go to an Ivy and become a corporate lawyer or a Goldman intern or something like that, and his pitch is that he can give their kids an extra sheen of life experience, that will even help rather than harm their career prospects. The whole thing reminds me of Pulp’s “Common People”, turned into a business model.

      Maybe it’s infuriating to think about the scions of a privileged upper class, having a curated slice-of-life experience before they return to their predestined folkways, but it seems like just another rich person’s privilege (of which there are many). Maybe our host is expressing her hate for this class in general, rather than for this act in particular?

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      1. This isn’t just rich people being rich people. I told last year how our entire freshman class was forced to read a book by an Insta blogger who traveled the world to pose in a swimsuit and with a cocktail among the ruins of Afghanistan and the poverty of Guatemala. Our students are definitely not rich or privileged but this was offered as an aspirational scenario to them, too. I had to volunteer to be committee chair this year to prevent something like this from happening again. I was successful but next year I’m on sabbatical, and it can start repeating itself because people just don’t get it.

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    2. It does not get more neoliberal than this. And the craziest thing is that the guy doesn’t even realize it. He thinks it’s completely normal. These people instrumentalize everything. They treat everything as a conduit to making money. Scary stuff.

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  2. Spend a year in a fucking buddhist monastery and still retain the desire to apply to a top college. Looks like this dude has the whole attachment thing all figured out.

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  3. “Horrible, nasty individuals who are eating up everything that’s good in the world.”

    “A purpose-driven life produces a distinctive application. The grind produces indistinguishable ones.”

    Am unsure why joining a Buddhist monastery for a year means “a purpose-driven life”, while knowing what you want from the start and applying to college straight after high school graduation is not interpreted thus.

    Does this  applicant’s approach embody fluidity to you, shopping for experiences, while being presumably shielded from its costs by parental resources?

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    1. “Does this  applicant’s approach embody fluidity to you, shopping for experiences, while being presumably shielded from its costs by parental resources?
      “

      Yes.

      This signals affluent non-religious family: exactly what they are looking for.

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      1. Not just non-religious. These are people who can’t even understand the purpose of religion. They believe that personality= a list of unusual “experiences” and the point of life is purchasing these experiences to make yourself more marketable.

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        1. Westerners adopting Buddhism is really the cheapest way to signal you’re “spiritual” (which always remains undefined) and “deep” without having to inconvenience yourself even one bit lol. They’ve hollowed out the religion and wear it as a skinsuit. But to be fair, they do it for other religions too (LGBT pastors lol).

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    2. Absolutely. This is a search for quirkiness for its own sake. In the process, people make a mockery of religion because they see it as a cute, original way to social advancement and absolutely nothing else.

      I really hate the tone in which the poster relates the story. To him, this search for people who cobbled together a quirky persona is so natural that he doesn’t even question why he finds it a good thing.

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  4. There was a story circulating on the internet a couple of decades ago about a college essay that seemed like a parody of what’s happening now. I did some digging and it turns out it was submitted for an essay-writing contest, not an actual admissions essay. It was very well-written.

    3A. ESSAY: IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

    ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?

    I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

    I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

    Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

    I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

    I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

    I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

    But I have not yet gone to college.

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