All around me, I see girls forced to become rat racers in the College Application Industrial Complex, the subculture where students must craft themselves into the perfect specimens for college admission and often lose their authenticity, love of learning, and sense of self in the process.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the pressures on students to conform for college admissions, often sacrificing their true selves and passions.
Rachel Simmons critiques the societal pressure on students, particularly girls, to fit into a mold of perfection for college applications. This 'College Application Industrial Complex' encourages a competitive environment where authenticity, genuine love for learning, and personal identity are compromised in favor of presenting an idealized version of oneself, leading to a loss of individuality and deeper passions.
In practice
During a school assembly discussing college readiness, this quote can illustrate the importance of staying true to oneself.
You don't learn how to say 'hey, I have a problem,' but you also don't learn how to hear it. There's a total breakdown of how females talk to one another. It's very disconcerting for leadership because it means you don't talk to each other; you talk about each other.
Failing well is a skill. Letting girls do it gives them critical practice coping with a negative experience. It also gives them the opportunity to develop a kind of confidence and resilience that can only be forged in times of challenge.
When I did the original research for 'Odd Girl Out,' I asked every bullied girl I interviewed to tell me what she needed most from her family. The answer truly surprised me. It wasn't having the best solutions, calling the school, or trying to act like everything was okay. It was empathy.
With but a few exceptions, we don't have this personal study under masters any more. Craftsmanship has sunk very low. We no longer have any universally creative persons who are able to guide young learners not only in technical matters but also, at the same time, in a formal way.
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
Some advice: keep the flame of curiosity and wonderment alive, even when studying for boring exams. That is the well from which we scientists draw our nourishment and energy. And also, learn the math. Math is the language of nature, so we have to learn this language.
Now of the difficulties bound up with the public in which we doctors work, I hesitate to speak in a mixed audience. Common sense in matters medical is rare, and is usually in inverse ratio to the degree of education.
My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.
But the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future.
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