Van Goal

Why do you think you would make a good addition to this academic program?

Christmas coincides with college applications for me as you all know. My fingers have typed 15,818 words this week (or 36 pages – but who is counting after 5 really?). Yet, I press on – yay me. Anyway, it’s Christmas for Pete’s sake, and Christmas is just outstanding if you ask me. Wow, there is a pretty bold statement.
Anyway, it seems like pretty much everything I’ve written this week has been preceded by a number so why should this post be any different? So with that, I give you my, “Top 8 things about Christmas because I can’t think of 10 things right now”:

8. The cookies. Please, angel crisps? Gingerbread men? Peppermint bark? Pure deliciousness, that needs no excuse to make from December 1st – 25th.
Why are making a mess in the kitchen mixing eight pounds of butter with ten pounds of sugar?
Because it’s Christmas.

7. Starbucks coffee
Eighteen gingerbread lattes, plus seven peppermint mochas, plus three eggnog lattes, equal twenty eight different variations of milk and coffee whipped, steamed, and syrup'd. Twenty eight times of feeling just a little jittery for an hour after consumption (some would say that was the caffeine, but I would claim it to be "Christmas Cheer"). And fifteen of those twenty eight times playing "Small/Tall" with Starbucks girl who is no fun anymore because she initiates the debate now. "Hey Mike, small gingerbread latte?" Ugh

6. Guys at the mall
December 23rd. Presents. Oh my gah – I have to get presents! I have to buy stuff people will like!!! What the hell am I going to buy?! Will a gift card work? I'm hungry.
And with those thoughts in mind, 1.2 million guys storm the mall at the same time to find presents that will either be re-gifted or used as grounds for divorce. We all stumble through the maze of stores, looking crestfallen and dazed as some poor girl working at Bath & Body Works tries to explain the difference between a peach scrub and a peach wash (peach scrub has little pieces of sand in it). What does it all mean? Why are there so many people here? I HATE SHOPPING! There is comfort in the fact that everyone else in the mall is feeling the same pains.

5. Ice skating
There is a place close to home called the Reston Town Center that offers an outdoor skating rink that is across from a Panera and a La Madeline. It’s lit perfectly, and for me, the rink just embodies holiday and is pretty much a sure thing if you have a date.

4. Hot chocolate
Not to be confused with coffee. Hot chocolate is what you drink after you play in the snow. I’m talking about SwissMiss and jet-puffed marshmallows, man. Does anyone else picture an Air Force pilot being handed a mallow in need of marshing? Probably not – but you will now.

3. Christmas lights
Really, does anything else need to be said? Of course not.

2. Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole
If you haven’t heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas sung by Frank, or The Christmas Song by Mistah King Cole, then you are no longer allowed to celebrate Christmas until you have. Seriously…you think this is a joke? I am not smiling about this – Frank Sinatra is no laughing matter. You will have yourself a merry little Christmas or I will punch you in the face.

1. Washington DC
No, it isn’t the best thing about Christmas – but it does give me a reason to post the pictures I took down there this week:

When application essays and blog posts collide

There is a large walk-in closet in my house that my father converted into a library. The four shelves that run around the perimeter of the room are sagging from the excessive weight that rests on them. Those shelves, in essence, are bearing the weight of my education on their shoulders. James Barrie, Brian Jacques, C. S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald crowd each other on the shelves of our library. Classic authors, they are world renowned for their literary achievements. Among others, they have each played a somewhat lesser known role--that of my educator.
When I was not yet two years old, my mother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease. Severely weakened by daily treatments of chemotherapy, all she could manage was to sit with me in front of the television. For hours I watched the same episodes of Sesame Street, becoming so familiar with the script that I began calling lines before they were said. My mother is not one to condone unlimited television time and is a strong proponent of the, “TV will turn you into a zombie” theory. Finally, she could tolerate it no more; Mom sent Big Bird off to migrate for the winter.
In his place, she held The Story of Peter Pan. It was a gigantic book with full color, 12X20 illustrations. Its total page number ran well past 150. With a steely resolve, despite her painful mouth and throat, my mom plowed through the entire story with me in one morning sitting. For the next week, seven times a day, she read that story aloud to me. She had no idea how long we had together, no idea if our days of stories would give way to days of imponderable sorrow. But she knew that between the covers of the books we could find great adventures together and if she were to die, I would have cultivated a habit of appreciating the treasure of literature. Peter Pan ceded to Robin Hood, and Robin Hood was replaced by King Arthur, and so it went for the next two years.
The cancer was in remission when my friends enrolled in preschool. My parents made a bold decision. They had learned that time and energy were precious and that both could be better utilized by learning at home within our family and in the world, with my father, than in an institutional school. I would read. I would travel. I would work. I would learn. My mother, a graduate of the University of Virginia’s School of Education and a lover of great books, would proctor my education. She built a curriculum on living books. For every major historical event there was an accompanying literary masterpiece. A mother reading a picture book to her son spawned a life that is inextricably intertwined with literature.
There has been an author for every noteworthy stride in my educational journey. When I was twelve, I began reading novels by Brian Jacques. His meticulous style of writing carefully described every scene. I began imitating him, and slowly, the horrible speller who could not construct a simple sentence to save his life, was writing in the style of a great British storyteller.
As my essays began to mature, so too, did my interest in writing. I moved past the fantasy of Brian Jacques and began delving into the philosophical musings of C. S. Lewis. At fourteen, much of what Lewis had to say went soaring over my head. However, I did learn how to formulate a large idea and present it on paper in a critical manner. Countless times, Lewis has set before me a banquet of food for thought.
If C.S. Lewis taught me how to philosophize in writing, then Charles Dickens instructed me on the importance of appealing to a reader’s senses. It is impossible not to feel the cold cobblestones under David Copperfield’s feet nor smell the blood and steel in revolutionary France. Dickens demonstrated that a good writer uses sensory detail to make his point.
I turned east across the Atlantic in my junior and senior years of high school. It was at that time that I learned the power of subtle allegory from John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath, yet it was Steinbeck’s short story, The Pearl that struck a nerve inside of me. Reading and feeling as his characters fell away from their pious beginnings, contorting to the whims of malice and greed, I could not help but breathe in awe at the fluidity of Steinbeck. To this very day, I love reliving the dark, sordid tale of The Great Gatsby through the eyes of Nick Carraway.
These brilliant authors have influenced my prose and have formed my intellect. I’ve grown up steeped in literature. As I step into the closet, slightly reminiscent of a wardrobe I once passed through in a novel, I cannot help but feel attached to the treasure held on the shelves. Each book is a bit of the mosaic that is my life. It would not be a stretch to say my personality is comprised of the exuberance of Peter Pan, the buoyancy of Jay Gatsby, the resolve of the Joad family, and perhaps a bit of mischief, courtesy of the Artful Dodger.

Ornithologists unite!

There is an overwhelmingly prominent attitude that accompanies many people in metropolitan DC. You need look no further than the local Starbucks to find this attitude. You approach the coffee shop’s doors at the same time someone is exiting through your entrance. You open the door, and the exiting body brushes past you, sipping a $5 latte while chatting busily away on a teeny tiny cell phone. No thanks or acknowledgement of the people around him. As far as he is concerned the world consists of him, his cell phone, and his latte. We are all busy, and have, at some point in time, copped a superiority attitude towards our fellow doormen. Tonight, I was stuck in traffic and running late for practice and cut off someone trying to merge. I wasn’t trying to be rude; I was just so focused on me that I was sure that my needs were met. There is always an opportunity to put yourself before others. The trick is remembering its inverse.

We can do no great things, only small things with great love.

That is one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa. As I have gotten older, I’ve leaned upon those words like a marine would, Semper Fi. Some people, like Mother Teresa, are called to greater things than others. Yet, whether you are the Pope, or the doorman at Starbucks, you can do the small things. That is comforting to me, knowing that the small things count for something. If I can make those baby steps, maybe over a stretch of a lifetime, they will add up to one giant bound.

So with Mother Teresa’s advice I can step back into the busy late afternoon rush hour in McLean. I can let people merge in front of me, cut me off, and I am practically an ornithologist with all the birds that have been flipped in my direction. I might not be curing cancer or solving world hunger when I grab the doors and smile, keep my fingers to myself in traffic, or ask the cashier how her day has been. But at least I’m putting my drop into the ocean. Mother Teresa would observe that, “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop”.