Living Life Forward

Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward.

Finally, a Kelly Story. Lots of people told me that one of the reasons they looked forward to reading my blog is because I might revive the "Kelly Stories" that took shape during my law school years. So, here's the first one about the Berkeley Babe.

To tell the story, I have to go backwards. It is about a year ago. The phone rings and I pick it up. It's Kelly. I'm surprised to hear from her because she is supposed to be writing her GRE and according to the schedule, she probably has an hour left in the exam, so she shouldn't be calling at that moment.

"Mom, can you pick me up at the Kipling Station?" "Yes", I said – and that's all, because I can hear the stress in her voice that brooks no further questions. "Okay, but you pick me up – not Dad". Uh, oh, not good, I am thinking but not saying; after all, Dad is her chauffeur not Mom. "Okay". "And, can you bring my cigarettes?" Ditto uh, oh. Kelly doesn't smoke during the day. "Right, I'm on my way".

A few minutes later, she is sitting in the car and she is beyond devastated. She absolutely knows that she didn't do well on the GRE and she's thinking that the future couldn't be more grimmer (bad grammar that phrase, but apt). Nevertheless, as we talk it through, she makes a plan to canvass her professors about the weight of the GRE on admission to graduate school. Her professors assure her that, while the GRE scores do carry some weight depending on the particular university, a low score is not a complete bar to admission.

So, she carries on toward her dream and carefully selects universities to apply to. She avoids those that, although she might like to go to, her research (or her gut) tells her a GRE score carries too much weight at that school to even bother trying.

Fast forward, many crazy months later and she has finally selected the University of California at Berkeley. Wow! (Many more stories about Berkeley to tell on this blog, all of which to follow.)

A few weeks after beginning her PHD program, she goes to a conference in Santa Clara, California. There she meets up with a pre-eminent philosopher professor from Princeton University. She tells him that his learned paper was the subject of a criticism that she wrote (about his position on the particular philosophy!) and used in order to gain admission into her graduate program. Gutsy move, I'm thinking at the time she is telling me this.

The professor is intrigued and asks her to recount her criticism for her. She goes off on a ten minute rant (her words, not mine). At some point, he stops her and asks her why in the world she didn't apply to Princeton. Obviously, he is beyond impressed with her.

She tells him that she didn't apply because she thought it would be hopeless given her low GRE scores.

No doubt you can guess how the conversation ends: He tells her that Princeton doesn't give much weight to the GRE scores!!

A lesson that Kelly learned backward. As Wayne Gretzky said, "You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take".

However, in typical Kelly fashion, she loves Berkeley and fits right in there. I'm not sure how much she would enjoy the elitist attitude that Princeton conjures up for me. So, like the beginning quote on this blog attributed to Kierkegaard, Kelly is learning all the right lessons in life but choosing to live forward.

[A mother note: I'm happy that she didn't choose Princeton. Although it is miles and many minutes closer to home than Berkeley, New Jersey doesn't sound nearly as exciting a place to visit as California...if she's going to be gone from my life, I'd rather it be to somewhere as fascinating as minutes-from-San-Francisco.]

The Berkeley Babe, living life forward.