Chapter Two #3
I spent the next day burrowed in my room, only leaving to shower and grab food from the dining hall.
There was too much reading to catch up on, too many papers to write.
I started to read Foucault and found myself just repeating the word “panopticon” out loud over and over again.
Finally, I closed the book and conceded to a five-minute break.
I unlocked my phone and skimmed through my emails, glancing at announcements about fellowship opportunities and homework assignments.
I refreshed my inbox one more time out of habit and was about to set down my phone, but a new subject line caught my eye.
Sender: Harvard Law School admissions.
Subject: Your application status has been updated.
I unzipped my backpack and pulled out my computer, only to have it fall directly on my left foot. “Ow!” I cried, trailing my yelp with a few obscenities.
“Are you okay?” Eunjin shouted through the wall.
“Fine! All good!”
I picked up the computer and pulled up the application portal. I typed in my username and password and clicked submit. My fingers tripped over the keys and it took three tries to log in. Finally, my applicant dashboard appeared. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again.
The Harvard Admissions Committee has completed its evaluation of this year’s candidates, and I am genuinely sorry to—
The first image that appeared in my mind when I found out I had been rejected by Harvard was Arnold Schoenbackler’s face.
His beady little eyes that took in Eunjin’s and my body parts one by one like he was assessing a used car.
I didn’t know much about Arnold but I knew he was well credentialed, and I remembered thinking that if the upper echelons could accept him and his general air of grossness then surely they could also accept me. Clearly, I was wrong.
The second image that appeared in my mind was a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with Cheese Deluxe.
Side of fries and Dr Pepper. It had been my go-to order at McDonald’s since the moment I graduated from Happy Meals.
I had one just a few weeks ago, on the day I submitted all of my law school applications.
It was to celebrate the fact that once I became a high-powered corporate lawyer, I probably wouldn’t be eating much McDonald’s anymore. Wrong again.
I had not gotten into Harvard. I had not been accepted into the upper echelons of society.
There would be plenty of McDonald’s in my future.
My hands were numb and tingling and I tried to move them but I couldn’t; that was when I realized I had been sitting on them this entire time, and I pulled them out and shook them in the air.
I felt faint, like I was about to pass out.
How was any of this possible? I had a 99th percentile LSAT.
3.94 GPA. Sparkling letters of recommendation.
People like me didn’t get denied. People like me got in everywhere they applied to.
I wondered if I was experiencing a bout of sleep paralysis.
Sometimes when I was asleep I would hallucinate myself waking up, but at the same time understand that I was not truly awake.
During these moments I would try to will myself to full consciousness but find that I couldn’t move, that I was stuck in my state of sleep.
Maybe I was asleep now and only hallucinating this email.
I willed myself to wake up by using the tricks that would usually get me out of sleep paralysis.
I tried moving each of my toes one by one.
Then I tried suddenly slapping myself in the face.
None of my efforts prevailed. I was still on the same plane of consciousness, staring at my computer screen.
I had no choice but to accept that I must not have been hallucinating, and the shock of the rejection felt like it was burrowing a hole into my chest and my abdomen.
I didn’t realize that I had moved so far forward in my chair in my attempt to stare at the words on the computer screen until I lost my balance and fell knees-first onto the floor.
I gripped the corners of my desk and pulled myself back up, ignoring the sharp pain that it sent into my palms.
My mind went into fix-it mode. I told myself that there was no point in panicking.
I was too level-headed and rational for that.
The only possible explanation was that they received the wrong scores in my application.
I pulled up my email and typed a note addressed to the admissions office.
“I would like to confirm that you received the correct LSAT score, which was a 178 out of 180, and the correct transcript, which showed a 3.94 out of 4.0 GPA.” My fingers were so numb that it took me an entire minute just to type this one sentence.
Wait, everyone’s going to be emailing them at this point. Even the people who genuinely didn’t deserve to get in. I closed out of my email and took three deep breaths. This is just a mistake. I’m going to get all of this sorted out in no time. They just need to know that they made a mistake.
I looked up news articles of universities who mistakenly sent rejection letters to accepted applicants and vice versa.
This is super common. Maybe it wasn’t an error with your LSAT scores and transcript.
Maybe it was actually a problem on their end.
Just wait an hour or two and they’ll have figured out their mistake and sent you another email congratulating you.
I lay down on my bed and tried to calm my breath.
I felt a tightness in my chest that I never experienced before.
My breathing grew rapid. Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
The world began to close in on me and I could barely see anything, only a small circle of white from the ceiling that appeared fuzzy on the edges. Am I dying? I began to wonder.
I jumped out of bed and rushed to the hallway. I knocked on Eunjin’s door until my knuckles turned red.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
It was close to midnight, her usual bedtime. But when her eyes met mine, the irritation dropped from her face.
“Jesus, Liz, you look really pale. Are you okay?”
I pressed an arm against the doorframe to keep myself from collapsing. “Eunjin, I think I’m dying.”
“Are you on drugs? Did you take acid?”
“No!” I wailed. “I’m not on anything, I swear. Eunjin, I don’t know what’s going on. I need help.” My hand slipped from the doorframe and I nearly tripped. Eunjin put both arms around me and led me into her room.
“Okay. Stay right there. Give me one second.”
I watched her dial a number on her phone while I sat on her bed and gasped for breath.
The room spun around me; I expected to fall unconscious at any moment.
I wouldn’t mind, as long as it made the feeling stop.
Eunjin helped me stand up and beckoned me to the hallway.
She guided me to sit against her door. Then, she sat next to me, holding my hand. My heart still pounded.
I could barely hear what she was saying; something about being here when the ambulance arrived.
After a few minutes, I felt my breathing slow down.
I no longer felt like I was going to die, and my vision had cleared up.
A droplet of something was sliding down the side of my face, reaching my upper lip.
I licked it with my tongue; it tasted like salt.
It was only then that I realized my entire body was covered in sweat.
Eunjin was still sitting next to me on the carpet, furiously texting on her phone.
“Shit,” I said. “I think I feel better now.”
“Did you take something? Acid? Coke? Adderall?” Eunjin asked. “What did you take?”
“No! I literally was in my room.”
The elevator dinged. Two EMTs emerged, and they speed-walked down the hallway while rolling a bright red stretcher.
“I’m fine now!” I yelled across the hall.
They didn’t seem to hear me. The two of them approached where Eunjin and I were sitting on the floor and looked down at us with concern.
One was a middle-aged woman with brown hair tied in a low ponytail, and the other looked like a student.
I remembered that Columbia’s EMT service hired undergraduates as a part of their program.
My panic instantly alchemized into embarrassment.
This guy might’ve been in one of my classes.
“I’m fine now. False alarm! Sorry for making you guys come all the way over here,” I said.
“Are you sure?” the undergraduate asked.
“Yes, false alarm. I’m totally fine! I was just overreacting. Everything is okay now.”
As if the arrival of the EMTs wasn’t bad enough, my next-door neighbor also peeked out of her door. Her name was Allie, Amy? Something like that.
“Is everything okay over here?”
“Yes, it is! You should go back to your room! It’s all good.” By acting upbeat, maybe I could make them think that Eunjin was having a medical emergency, not me. I stood, only to feel my vision growing blurry again. I instantly crumpled against the wall.
“Whoa, easy there,” the middle-aged EMT said, helping me to the floor.
Humiliation washed over me. All I wanted to do was hide away under the covers in my bed, but I imagined that would be even more of an inconvenience to them, as they probably had to get certain information from me to make sure I was okay.
I wanted to seem cooperative, to give them everything they needed to feel certain I was fine and move on.
They asked questions about my health and I tried to downplay the symptoms I had experienced to the point that I even started believing my own assurances.
Did I really think I was going to die? No, I must’ve just blurted that out without thinking.
Did I really have trouble breathing? No, it must’ve just been heartburn from something I ate at the dining hall.
They asked if something had happened to trigger my episode.
I told them that I had received some bad news but that it was no big deal and I was over it now.
In reality I thought that it was an extremely big deal, but I didn’t want all of their attention on me, and I didn’t want to speak into the world what was, for now, relegated to just my computer screen.
The older paramedic encouraged me to visit a psychiatrist. “You might’ve had a panic attack,” she said. “It’s okay. Plenty of people have them, and you can take some medication to prevent them from happening again.”
I promised I would, and the two of them left with their stretcher, the older paramedic rolling it down the hall like those nannies I saw pushing strollers whenever I went to Central Park. My neighbor had returned to her dorm. I prayed for no more curious onlookers.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Eunjin asked. She helped me stand up and led me into her room. She handed me her water bottle; I took a gulp and realized how dehydrated I was. I emptied it within a few seconds.
“Yes, I’m totally fine,” I said, wiping my mouth with a sleeve.
“Do you want me to call your mom?”
“No! Absolutely not.”
Eunjin insisted that I lie on her bed for a few minutes.
My head still felt woozy so I slipped off my shoes and lay down on my back.
She didn’t have a mattress topper, and I could feel every bump of the flimsy foam interior.
The springs creaked as I rolled around in search of a comfortable position.
To make matters worse, I realized that I didn’t have my key card. I was locked out of my room.
I didn’t realize I had been mumbling my thoughts out loud until Eunjin said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll call housing services.”
Her kindness devastated me. I knew I didn’t deserve it, that nothing about my situation, from an objective point of view, warranted the drama that I was enacting upon myself and everyone around me.
There were people who overcame tragedy, illness, war, devastation—in other words, real problems—while I was crying over a law school rejection as though it were the end of the world.
Yet no amount of reasoning could stop me from feeling like it was the end of the world; no amount could bridge the disconnect between my rational thoughts and my visceral reaction.
This was my whole world. Every day, I went to class and studied hard and wrote my essays to get good grades so I could go to Harvard.
This singular goal had occupied my mind every day, become as much a part of my routine as eating or sleeping.
If anything, sometimes I would even sacrifice my eating and sleeping—skip a meal or stay up late studying—so that I could meet this goal.
It wasn’t catastrophic in the grand scheme of things, but it was catastrophic to me. I needed this.
Twenty minutes later, a staff member came and unlocked the door.
“Here you go. Careful you don’t get locked out twice.
Next time there’s a twenty-five-dollar fee,” she said to Eunjin, ignoring my presence.
Eunjin nodded. The staff member thought that Eunjin was the one who was locked out, even though she had access to the name and picture of the person living in the room.
I hated how flattered I felt to be mistaken for her.
But maybe it was just because no one could tell Asians apart.
I returned to my room and flipped off the lights.
I didn’t bother changing into pajamas or closing the blinds before climbing into bed.
The streetlamps outside created shadows on the ceiling.
I let my imagination warp them into a bear, a desk, and a very obese cat, pretending I was taking a Rorschach test. Did people still take those?
I was pretty sure they didn’t, but I couldn’t remember the reason.
Finally, I was too tired to make anything out of the shadows; they just looked like blobs. I stared at them until I fell asleep.