Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
It was the middle of February, and the days began to stay bright for minutely longer each evening until one day I got out of my evening seminar and it was only twilight, the streetlamps not yet casting their fluorescent lights on the shrub-lined sidewalks.
It had been unseasonably warm the past week, the temperature rising to the fifties.
Earlier that day, as I walked to Low Beach to hang out on the steps with my friends, it felt as though the sun was disinfecting my mind and body from any worries that I had harbored before.
A temporary nirvana, a temporary self-consciousness that extended beyond the self as it was now to the way it would be reflected upon in the future.
The closest I had ever come to this sensation was the first week of college, when I realized I could go anywhere, do anything, and no one would know.
It was the realization of freedom—realization in both definitions of the word, in both perceiving my freedom and obtaining it.
Yet the feeling as I crossed the sundial, as I waved to my beautiful, smiling friends, transcended even that: it was the realization of youth.
The realization that I was young, that I’d never be this young again, and that I was currently living a moment that I would someday feel nostalgic for.
There was a paradox in these two sensations.
When I was eighteen, I felt old, as though I had entered a new stage of life.
I was focused on all I had left behind. But now, at twenty-one, I felt young.
I realized just how much there was ahead of me.
A baby. But more importantly, what the baby would give me: an acceptance to Harvard Law.
I knew that most people would think I was crazy.
Who in their right mind would decide to have a baby before they even graduated from college?
But I had it all planned out. Robert was right.
Harvard wanted to diversify its class. They didn’t want too many Boring Asian Females from immigrant families and elite colleges.
Ironically, they probably wanted people more similar to the ones I went to high school with.
I was from South Dakota, but in their eyes, I wasn’t a true South Dakotan.
I wasn’t a born-and-raised Midwesterner, the type of rural Real American that East Coasters accepted at their institutions to pretend they didn’t live in a bubble and to prove that their dedication to diversity extended beyond just race and class to other related-but-not-quite-the-same factors like geography.
I would find Harvard’s efforts admirable (kind of) if it weren’t for the fact that they cost me the acceptance I deserved.
This pregnancy would allow me to rebrand myself from a typical try-hard Asian to someone interesting.
Funnily enough, I had always looked down upon my high school classmates for having kids too young. And now here I was, showing that I was a true Midwesterner after all.
I set up another meeting with Robert to confirm my hypothesis.
Of course, it took him a moment to get over the surprise that I, an unmarried twenty-one-year-old undergraduate living in the most liberal city in America, was pregnant, but I framed my situation as the following: I was excited to have the baby, but I was worried that it would destroy my dreams of becoming a lawyer.
Would being a mother make me even more uninteresting?
(I knew that couldn’t be true, but better to frame it this way so I wouldn’t come across as a calculating psychopath.)
“No, not at all,” he said. “In fact, it’ll be the opposite.
These schools are all looking for people who’ve overcome adversity.
Who better demonstrates that than someone who’s raising another human and who also wants to further their own education?
I gotta admit, that’s going to make you a very, very compelling candidate. ”
I strolled back to my dorm, grinning the entire time.
I mapped out the timeline. Based on my last period, I was approximately six weeks pregnant.
I’d work on my application during the second trimester, when symptoms would be mildest. The baby would be born sometime in September.
That left me almost exactly a year to spend some quality time with it before starting law school.
Of course, David would have to pay child support, as I certainly did not have the financial resources to raise a child alone.
But he should just be grateful that I wouldn’t expect him to be involved in the child’s life in any way.
With his payments, I would hire a full-time nanny and night nurse so that I could devote all of my attention to my law school applications.
I could hear the hypothetical criticisms from my friends.
“You’re having a baby as an unmarried twenty-one-year-old with someone you barely know, and when you have literally no job?
Have you really thought this through?” In my head, I responded to their questions with calm rationality.
“Yes, I’ve thought it through completely, just like I’ve thought through everything else in my life,” I would say.
“I always knew I’d have kids someday. And if you just take a moment to erase all your misconceptions and open your mind, now is the best time for it to happen.
I’m taking a gap year before law school, so this is the most free time I will ever have.
I don’t have to worry about finances because David will be legally forced to pay his share.
Having the baby will help me go to law school, which means it’ll also help me get a good job.
Plus, I’m mature for my age. I feel confident I’m ready. ” How could they argue with that?
—
I felt confident now that I would get into Harvard. I should’ve never doubted myself; I’d always known that I was a 99th percentile person, and I needed to start acting that way. There was just one problem.
I didn’t want to—I couldn’t—wait an extra year to attend Harvard Law.
Sure, I could go along with my original plan and have the baby during a gap year and matriculate next fall instead of this fall.
But how would that be fair? How would it be fair for the undeserving Laura to get to go to Harvard right out of undergrad while I would have to wait an extra year?
If she was a year ahead of me in law school, then she’d also get to work in big law a year sooner than me.
She’d get a head start in making a big law salary, in climbing the big law ladder, in making partner at a big law firm.
She’d always be one year ahead for the rest of her career, and that was just not something I could accept.
Especially if I were making as big of a sacrifice as the one I had decided to make.
As a single, expecting mother with grades and test scores that were on par with if not superior to Laura’s, I knew without a doubt that I’d be considered the more compelling candidate.
And even though the official application deadline had passed, there was technically no deadline for providing an update to your profile.
I could submit an addendum about my situation, and the admissions officers would immediately see that I was more interesting than all the Asian females in their applicant pool.
The only problem was, they had already accepted Laura.
By this time in the application cycle, they probably had already filled up all twenty-seven of their allotted spots for high-achieving Asian females.
It wasn’t like they could take that back once they had someone better in the mix.
They’d still have to reject me, regardless of how much sparkle my impending single motherhood would add to my application.
They’d just think that it was a shame that I hadn’t provided the update earlier.
But sometimes universities did rescind acceptances. It was rare, but it happened, usually for one of two reasons: if someone’s grades fell dramatically after they got in, or if they were caught in a moral scandal.
Hypothetically speaking, if Harvard rescinded Laura’s acceptance, wouldn’t that open up an extra spot for a different, even better candidate?
I realized it was time to focus on a different mission. Now that I knew how I was going to get into Harvard, it no longer mattered to me how Laura had gotten in. To get myself in, I needed to get Laura out.
Of course, I wasn’t cruel. Laura could still go to law school; she just couldn’t go to Harvard. Maybe Georgetown, actually. That seemed more suitable for her.