instantly blotted this experience out. I don’t remember her age or race or how
she happened to look at me that day when I turned up in her office doorway, full
of pride at the fact that I was on track to graduate in the top 10 percent of my
class at Whitney Young, that I’d been elected treasurer of the senior class, made
the National Honor Society, and managed to vanquish pretty much every doubt
I’d arrived with as a nervous ninth grader. I don’t remember whether she
inspected my transcript before or after I announced my interest in joining my
brother at Princeton the following fall.
It’s possible, in fact, that during our short meeting the college counselor said
things to me that might have been positive and helpful, but I recall none of it.
Because rightly or wrongly, I got stuck on one single sentence the woman
uttered.
“I’m not sure,” she said, giving me a perfunctory, patronizing smile, “that
you’re Princeton material.”
Her judgment was as swift as it was dismissive, probably based on a quick-
glance calculus involving my grades and test scores. It was some version, I
imagine, of what this woman did all day long and with practiced efficiency,
telling seniors where they did and didn’t belong. I’m sure she figured she was
only being realistic. I doubt that she gave our conversation another thought.
But as I’ve said, failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result. And for
me, it felt like that’s exactly what she was planting—a suggestion of failure long
before I’d even tried to succeed. She was telling me to lower my sights, which
was the absolute reverse of every last thing my parents had ever told me.
Had I decided to believe her, her pronouncement would have toppled my
confidence all over again, reviving the old thrum of not enough, not enough.
But three years of keeping up with the ambitious kids at Whitney Young
had taught me that I was something more. I wasn’t going to let one person’s
opinion dislodge everything I thought I knew about myself. Instead, I switched
my method without changing my goal. I would apply to Princeton and a
scattershot selection of other schools, but without any more input from the
college counselor. Instead, I sought help from someone who actually knew me.
Mr. Smith, my assistant principal and neighbor, had seen my strengths as a student
and furthermore trusted me with his own kids. He agreed to write me a
recommendation letter.
I’ve been lucky enough now in my life to meet all sorts of extraordinary and
accomplished people—world leaders, inventors, musicians, astronauts, athletes,