professors, entrepreneurs, artists and writers, pioneering doctors and researchers.
Some (though not enough) of them are women. Some (though not enough) are
black or of color. Some were born poor or have lived lives that to many of us
would appear to have been unfairly heaped with adversity, and yet still they seem
to operate as if they’ve had every advantage in the world. What I’ve learned is
this: All of them have had doubters. Some continue to have roaring, stadium-
sized collections of critics and naysayers who will shout I told you so at every little
misstep or mistake. The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I
know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in
them, and to push onward with their goals.
That day I left the college counselor’s office at Whitney Young, I was
fuming, my ego bruised more than anything. My only thought, in the moment,
was I’ll show you.
But then I settled down and got back to work. I never thought getting into
college would be easy, but I was learning to focus and have faith in my own
story. I tried to tell the whole thing in my college essay. Rather than pretending
that I was madly intellectual and thought I’d fit right in inside the ivy-strewn
walls of Princeton, I wrote about my father’s MS and my family’s lack of
experience with higher education. I owned the fact that I was reaching. Given
my background, reaching was really all I could do.
And ultimately, I suppose that I did show that college counselor, because six
or seven months later, a letter arrived in our mailbox on Euclid Avenue, offering
me admission to Princeton. My parents and I celebrated that night by having
pizza delivered from Italian Fiesta. I called Craig and shouted the good news. The
next day I knocked on Mr. Smith’s door to tell him about my acceptance,
thanking him for his help. I never did stop in on the college counselor to tell her
she’d been wrong—that I was Princeton material after all. It would have done
nothing for either of us. And in the end, I hadn’t needed to show her anything. I
was only showing myself.