Jacques Steinberg's _The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College_

My friend, Dennis, a Wesleyan graduate, recommended this non-fiction book, published in 2002, to me. Steinberg, an education writer for The New York Times, tracks Ralph Figueroa, a Wesleyan University admissions officer, as he recruits college hopefuls. As a teacher who pens several college recommendations a year, many of which are addressed to the prestigious liberal-arts college under scrutiny in this book, I found this an absorbing and interesting read. While Steinberg doesn't offer any earth-shaking, surprising insights--suspect that college preparatory teachers are all too aware of the vagaries and quirky variables inherent in college admissions--I enjoyed the compelling case-study profiles of the applicants, representing diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities and think the book might provide instructive perspective for students and their parents as they go through the admissions process. Steinberg also does an excellent job in documenting the mullings and occasionally agonizing decisions made by Wesleyan's selection committee as they weigh the relative merits of test scores, recommendations, GPAs, and
co-curricular/extracurricular activities and construct the incoming freshman class of 2004. The bottom line? Admissions, though we'd desire to view it as logical and just, is a very human process.

Pachebel Rant

My cousin Ada sent me this silly music clip, knowing my long-term distaste for Pachebel's Canon in D--a classical music piece that really ought to have a 100-year moratorium placed on it, given its repetitive, saccharine ubiquity in weddings, supermarket Muzak, and cell phone ring tones. But even if you dearly love the piece, this video's worth a listen.



Rob Paravonian, "Pachebel Rant"

Come Back to Afghanistan

Come Back to Afghanistan: A California Teenager's Story, by Said Hyder Akbar and Susan Burton, is my recommended read for this month. Akbar, currently a senior at Yale and the child of Afghan immigrants, writes a thoughtful, compelling, humorous memoir of his time spent in post-Taliban Afghanistan. He has a particularly interesting vantage point, as his father was advisor to Afghan president, Harmid Karzai, and later became governor of Kunar, a volatile province. The political and the personal beautifully weave together in this riveting, highly readable tale of chaos and change.

For more on Said Hyder Akbar, please listen to the programs he recorded for National Public Radio's "This American Life". Links to both shows are listed to the right.