Rob took the PSATs awhile back: usually that’s a junior-year thing, but his school lets sophomores take it if they just want to see what it’s like or see how it goes. Or if they want to get out of part of the school day, whatever. So anyway Rob took it, and I believe I see how this test is funded: BY SELLING THE STUDENTS’ NAMES AND ADDRESSES TO EVERY COLLEGE MAILING LIST IN THE WORLD. Our record so far is ELEVEN ads in one day from colleges.
I am reading Brooke Shields’s most recent memoir, and Paul keeps saying, “I think you should stop reading that book. It’s making you cranky.” Well, YES. Making me additionally cranky is that it feels as if anything negative I say about the book is attacking the person of Brooke Shields, and that feels mean. If our positions were reversed, I’d be wondering why she felt she needed to volunteer those opinions publicly. Perhaps she could have just stopped reading my book if it was making her so cranky, I might think to myself indignantly. Nobody’s forcing her to read it.
Nevertheless, I want to tell you what I think of the book. Let me see if I can put a finger on what the issue is. Do you sometimes find you’re listening to someone tell a story, and the story doesn’t sit right? Like, you don’t know what the problem IS, whether something’s MISSING or ADDED or MISLEADING or WHAT, but WHATEVER the reason, the story doesn’t sound REAL? A good example is when someone is telling their side of a fight, where you KNOW it’s not right because the dialogue isn’t fitting together: one person seems to be talking the way you do when you’re lying awake thinking of other ways a conversation could have gone, and the other person seems to be talking like a completely ridiculous parody of an irrational unfair jerk, and it just doesn’t WORK. Or maybe the story contains details that are incompatible with other details. Or maybe some details don’t make sense—like, how is this family with twins doing seven loads of laundry a day? Or maybe events are described in a way that doesn’t line up with what you know of human behavior. WHATEVER the issue, something is amiss.
Or sometimes someone is telling a story, and you can tell THEY think it’s a true story, but you have little flashing lights going off EVERYWHERE. A good example is when someone is talking about how the other person in their romantic relationship has been behaving. “He just has to work SO LATE! Sometimes they call him at 11:00 at night and he has to go right into work and doesn’t get home until morning! But they’re not paying him for the overtime at all, so there’s no difference in his paycheck! In fact, they’re not even counting the hours! And the office is closed when he’s there, so I can’t reach him! Also, we’re having a weird problem with our phone: it rings, but when I answer, there’s no one there! Oh, and I have a funny story: there was a BRA in his car and it wasn’t mine! I was so upset for a minute, ha ha! But it turns out he found it on the sidewalk and picked it up to throw it away but then left it in his car by mistake! Ha ha!” And you’re like, “Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,” wondering if you should say something or if you should leave them to the version they seem to prefer. I mean, who knows, you could be wrong; who knows better, the person IN the situation, or YOU?
And also, have you encountered that thing where someone blames EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS on one single situation in their lives (their parents’ divorce, for example), until it doesn’t matter HOW sympathetic you start out, pretty soon you are going to start wishing they’d think of another reason and/or take some responsibility themselves and/or AT LEAST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT SO EXTREMELY MUCH NOW THAT IT HAS BEEN DECADES SINCE IT HAPPENED? Like, just because something is non-ideal, that doesn’t mean it is THE SOURCE OF EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG. And even if it REALLY IS the source of everything wrong, does that mean it needs to be re-said EVERY SINGLE TIME something bad happens, until people are reminded of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, or of that game where you add “in bed” to the end of every fortune-cookie fortune?
Also, the whole tone of the book is “How dare you incessantly attacking my mother for earning money by having me play alarmingly sexy roles when I was a child!! Instead you should incessantly attack her for drinking too much!!”
Also, Brooke Shields got a 1000 on her SATs and she went to Princeton. Imagine: her high school counselor tried to discourage her from applying, considering her academic record and test scores! But she REALLY liked the look of the campus, and felt like she wanted to go there, so she applied and got accepted. (P.S. Rob has not yet heard from Princeton.)
We are in a similar stage of life with one of our sons. We could fill a room with all the college brochures! The information about Brooke’s SAT score is a bit frustrating. My son has excellent scores and grades and although he also liked the “look” of Princeton, he wasn’t even allowed to apply because he got a 3 on one of his AP exams. Princeton only accepts around 5 percent of applicants. Did the book say how Brooke did academically while a student there?
The part on her time at college is surprisingly skimpy. She says she graduated cum laude.
You’d have to think most of the famous people who went to top tier schools got in for reasons other than their gpa/sat (although if you’re schooled on the set of movies, I’d think it’s pretty easy to get perfect grades). In order to get the cache of a celebrity attending their school, a college will definitely consider ‘life experience’ in an application. And I can actually see being a world famous movie star as equivalent to being something like an olympic athlete in that both are the height of their particular skill. Those top-tier schools also freely admit that it’s not nearly as hard to do well while you’re there as it is to get in.
That’s how I felt about this book: I can’t say I didn’t ENJOY it, well, I’m not sure, actually. It was more like something was missing and she wasn’t comfortable dishing the dirt, so she just hinted at the dirt (all the drinking and fights and kind-of neglect). I found it interesting, at least, but I was disturbed the whole time at their weird relationship. And some of it felt really strange, like would a ten-year-old talk like that to her mother? What about her being so sexualized at a young age? And the photos in the book, they were odd to me. There was one in particular that hinted about how her dad was so much more together than her mom, but then there was no real detail on her dad’s effect on her younger life. I don’t know. It was a strangely compelling read. I felt like the book was “wait, those things are too private so I’m not going to talk about it” but “I’m selling this book because it’s the real story of my mother, so those things are not private.”
Oh, honey. Just wait until he takes the actual-for-real PSAT. That’s when the postal carrier really starts to hate you.
So true. There was one day with my oldest when we felt like we were in that scene in Harry Potter… where the mail comes flying through the mail slot and fills the room. We don’t have a mail slot, but the mail box was completely full — it was hard to get all the college catalogs out.
I really hate mailing lists. Funny story- a friend of ours got a new driver’s license. They misspelled his name on it in a way he had never had it misspelled before. Immediately he started getting junk mail to that name. The dmv had sold his info.
I feel like you just recounted my relationship with Chad. He told me not to come over and got really mad when I drove from SF to LA to visit him! But he was just really stressed out! I found women’s clothes in an overnight bag in his room! Soooo weird! But it turned out to be his friend’s sister’s stuff and she slept on the couch! Ha ha! Totally legit!
I have such a soft spot for her because we both had big thick eyebrows in the early 80’s and we are both from NJ, but I’m glad to hear that her SAT scores were so low because I have a friend who used to work with her on something and he said she was LOVELY and SO NICE but SUPER DUMB and kept thinking, how did she make it at Princeton? But of course she could have gone anywhere, that’s just how it works. As usual I can’t imagine my kids going to college, taking the SATs. It must feel crazy.
I read the book too, and think you totally nailed it re the weird anger that people were mad at her mom for putting her in sexual situations as an 11 year old, vs. the the anger she thinks they should have had re: the drinking. And it irritated the hell out of me that she really seems to think that she got into Princeton on academic merit, with a 1000 on the SAT’s, while admitting that her grades in high school weren’t great. I honestly don’t have a problem with her getting into Princeton – life experience is a valid differentiator – but don’t insist that had nothing to do with it!
I actually was at Princeton (as a grad student, completely different admissions criteria) when Brooke was an undergraduate. What amazed me was not seeing Brooke Shields, but the fact that most of the undergraduate French majors (their seminar room was across the glassed-in atrium from ours) seemed to match her in looks. Apparently the undergraduates went out of their way to make it clear that they did not think she was anything special. This is probably a rumor but the story going around was that on the housing form for incoming freshmen in her year, about half of the girls put “not Brooke Shields” as a roommate request.
Don’t know if you’re interested in this particular part of her story, but Andre Agassi has an enjoyable auotbiography as well (“Open”). It might fill in some of the head-scratcher sections! I really liked it but then, I played/watched a LOT of tennis in my youth.
I second this book. I always loved him and could not understand why they were together!
My sister (who I adore) sometimes tells those stories where the other person is a complete stereotypical jerk and she always has the perfect one-liner retorts. I let it go because I love her, but I’m skeptical.
Oh! Have Rob take some classes for the PSAT next year.
If he scores high enough to be a National Merit Scholar he gets a free ride to a list of colleges across the country. Wished I had known that in HS. My bf in college AND our two best friends were going for free and there I was paying $200,000.00
Actually the National Merit Scholarship awards are not based just on your SAT scores, they’re based on your academic record and your “accomplishments” as well, and they are about $2500, not a free ride. There are a few other scholarships you can earn a year at a time up to four years, but those range from $500 to $2000. None of those scholarships are free tuition. It would be nice if they were! And I didn’t get one!
I think it varies a lot – at my school, it was $2000 a year no matter what, and also $5000 more a year if I kept my GPA very high. (Spoiler: I did not.)