Today you received admission letters from four graduate schools. Two of them had rejected you as an undergraduate. They are schools with impressive names, names that would make you seem like you had your shit together if/when you announced it at a dinner party, to your banker, on social media. Wouldn’t your parents be proud.

Today you also received four alerts from your campus police department. One of them said “allot.” Another one said “affect” instead of “in effect.” Yet another used “additional resources” when it really meant “the police departments from the rest of the county.” You have a lot of feelings about the events that transpired. You try to discuss it with your coworkers over lunch and they laugh gently and look away. When you come home, you try to discuss it with two friends, but the conversation only lasts one turn. You tweet memes from Facebook instead, always with a helpful caption: “good post.”

You don’t sleep very much anymore, so you’ve started to remember your dreams again. In them, you are always summoning white men you respect: your research advisor, Sufjan Stevens. (The person you live with confuses them, sometimes.)

You’ve recently gotten into a musician who dropped out of MIT to be in a band. This has been your desire all along.

It is getting late. You look at your inbox, emails from the police with subjects like “SHELTER IN PLACE” and “ALL CLEAR” nested in between “Campus Visit Invitation” and “Offer of Admission!”. You feel the dichotomy pulling you apart like you are made from string cheese. You are so used to fighting with people who lack privilege, you are still disoriented by the immensity of your own. Yeah, we get that you’re fucking #blessed, that you have some hard decisions to make.

The future awaits. But don’t pressure yourself. :^)

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