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“It’s a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.” –Ferris Bueller
To those who describe high school as the best years of their life, I offer you my dumbstruck confusion. Childish and stupid are the better ways I can think of to describe my experience in those four years. High school was awful. For more reasons than I can give here, I dropped out. Halfway through my junior year, I just gave up and quit going. Screw the system, I said. I decided I was gonna read books and have adventures and skip all the dumb graded repetition of formal education.
Looking back now from UC Berkeley, I realize I didn’t actually know how to go to school. I couldn’t have gone to college when I was 18 if Harvard had coughed up a full ride and a plane ticket. I was the latest model in a long line of dropouts and there were no instructions or encouragement to be had in my house.
A month ago I walked into Barrows Hall and saw a flyer that caught my attention. Shadow Day: have a local high school kid follow you around Berkeley for a day and help them get the feel of a real-live college student’s day. I immediately knew I would sign up. I boosted the signal to my friends and started making plans. I love this school; showing it to a teenager sounded like a singular pleasure.
I began to construct this potential teenager in my head. Maybe it would be someone who didn’t plan to go to college. Maybe it’d be a kid from Oakland High whose mind I could blow with good stories and sharp advice and the view from the top of the Campanile. With this dreaming came the whispering thoughts: Maybe if I had done this in high school, things would have been different.
Shadow Day came and I arrived at the Berkeley YWCA early, eager to collect my field-trip charge. I was given her name and a t-shirt and I waited. She arrived, just as eager as I, but not in the shape of my dreams. Three of her siblings had attended Cal, she had a 4.2 GPA, and she was absolutely college track. She did not remind me of myself. She reminded me instead of the people I went to high school with – those mystifying well-parented achievers who disappeared after senior year to colleges all over the country. I adjusted my expectations. This was still going to be a good day.
I planned the best possible tour, only to be thwarted by rain, a late opening Campanile, and a few changes of plan. I had planned to treat her to a nice lunch and ice cream, but she preferred to try out Café 3 and ask questions about whether she needed to add a sport to her already impressive roster of extracurriculars. I gave the best advice I could, loaned her my phone, and tried to facilitate the experience she wanted to have rather than the hollow one I had planned for Me and Mini-Me. Finally, I gave her the tour of the Doe and Morrison Libraries. They’re two of my favorite spots because of their beauty and utility, and they’re part of the reason I fell in love with Cal.
That’s where we finally saw eye to eye.
My sophomore charge’s eyes went wide in the Morrison. Engulfed in its perfect hush, she stared around, clearly impressed. In the reading rooms of Doe, she took it all in like a pilgrim. She stopped at every glass case and read every placard, utterly awed.
We walked back to the YWCA, talking, and got in for the final presentation of the day. With one of my classes cancelled and the other too late in the day, she didn’t get to attend lecture with me. I had done my best and still felt a little like I had failed.
The Shadow Day packet asks, “What did you learn today?”
Humbly, I asked her if she thought she had gained anything from the experience. She lit up and repeated to me the best parts of my walking tour. Berkeley time. The Dwinelle Brothers. Fat squirrels. The pass/no pass rule. And the library. The beautiful, amazing libraries were the thing she couldn’t get over; she loved them as I loved them. She told me she wasn’t sure about applying to Cal, that there were pressures from within her family and she was worried about the decision.
But today she had decided.
At the end of Shadow Day, she thanked me and hugged me goodbye.
I have been smiling ever since.
For more information about the YWCA Shadow Program, please visit: http://www.ywca-berkeley.org/2013/02/19/shadow-day/
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