Open Letter to NYU and Columbia’s Admissions Committees

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would strongly suggest that you reconsider any positive response you may be considering to my graduate school application. It has occurred to me, after submitting what I must consider a sub-par application package, that I may cause some sort of global, or at least zoological, damage to the world we have all, let�s face it, come to enjoy. The phrases that spring to mind in the event of the realization of an irrational and unexpected event involve flying ungulates (hardly desirable given their size and smell) and the icing over of the netherworld, which might destabilize all manner of moral compasses and further undermine the precarious health of our pontiff. (It is difficult to wish the clearly addled and elderly ill.) In the abstract realm, then, I would urge caution.

In the specific realm, I have no excuse for the shoddy quality of the editing of my submitted work. There was no weather impediment, no gnawing pet, no sudden injury. Indeed, I went on a last-minute trip to Europe with my boyfriend over Christmas when I should have been working on your forms and pages. I also lack any connections, nepotistic or otherwise, on which I might rely to weight the decision heavily in my favor. Or at all in my favor, really. Truth be told, I scrapped half the application five days before submission and received editorial comments no less than five hours prior to mailing. I ask you, are these the work and habits you would like to endorse and encourage with an acceptance? I cannot imagine that it would not undermine the prestige of your institution should you render an affirmative response. In short, there is no explanation I could profer that might counteract the effect of my inferior materials on you and your fellow judges.

When I express my certainty that my application will not pass muster, my friends say to me, �Emma,� they say, �Emma. Your very lack of faith makes it a certainty that you will get in! You are hedging your bets with us. It is the applications perceived to be of least value by their author, those most casually written, which must always signal general approbation and respect! You are sure to get in!� It is, however, equally possible � more likely, in fact � that I am correct and that the application was, shall we say, inadequate. Their argument is tricky, without mathematic support, reliant on their faith in me as a person which, while flattering, is no measure of my literary skill

You know I�m right. The genius must often sustain herself by saying persistently, �I will pay no mind to rejection: I know that I am great and will continue my work, regardless of public award or awareness. I am certain to be appreciated in time, perhaps even after my death.� On she toils, righteous writer! Dangerously, the hack employs the same phrases to bolster his rightly flagging confidence. His faith is not reality-based. The argument against him, as he sees it, is unprovable and therefore false, even when relentless failure is heaped upon him. He is blind to the equally -nay, more! – flimsy nature of his own belief. Is it hopeless then that he might receive a clear message? How to convince him that he is mistaken, is indeed a truly awful writer and ought to turn his attention to automotive mechanics or accounting or crack dealing or anything equally far from the fine art of writing? Why, by continually rejecting him! Life is cruel, and you, you panel, are the lesson givers, the bearers of the truly official rejection that may lay the beginning bricks on his road to a better life without public writing. (May I interrupt myself at this juncture to ask if you have some sort of stamp, some red ink, some large seal, that you might use on your letters rather than the gently worded and comforting text you usually send? Believe me: the worst writers have the toughest skin, have watched so many hours of Dr. Phil that, like the supplicant dater who will not take the gentle hint that you will be washing your hair every night for the rest of your days, they are immune to all but the bluntest rejection.)

If there are two lessons I have learned about writing, they are, first, write, and, second, sheer tenacity may well carry the day: there is success in surviving longer than anyone else. I may insist, as many certainly do, on pursuing the line of thinking which says that, upon rejection, you, you committee, you critics, are cretins and insufficiently insightful to see the value in my work, that its merit is hidden from your judgmental and bourgeois eye. In the face of this non-quality-based determination, you yourselves must be tenacious. Be strong! I may be the next blight, the next ridiculous success, the next Diane Johnson, a budding Jack Canfield. How do you know I have not already begun on a great work of memoir or self-help, or, God deliver us, both? I must be stopped.

With regards,
Emma Carlson