I am so smart. Like totally very smart. Beyond smart.
You want to know how blindingly smart I am? Here is an example of my intractable, deeply-rooted smartosity:
One of my students—based on my significant smartness coefficient, I snagged a job as a guidance counselor at a boarding school—wanted to take a business course in 11th grade next year. But because I am an off-the-charts smartasaurus, I was able to convince them to take history instead.
Colleges don’t want to see business courses on the transcript, I told their family. History looks better. As a result of my smart-filled advice, the student will be undoubtedly be admitted to top colleges. Taking history, the student will matriculate at Duke, Stanford, or possibly Princeton. Had the student taken business they would undoubtedly end up at North Cornstalk State Teachers College for the Tragically Unpleasant.
Mission accomplished. I can now get back to work forcing my other students to take courses in which they are ill-prepared, have little interest, and will do poorly. The right transcript results in the right admit. And college admissions is what it’s all about. Being admitted to this college rather than that one is the purpose of life. I would write more about this imperative topic, but in my mega-smartness,I have to continue preventing my students from reading books so that they can keep updating their resumes.
***
There’s a reason that Wile E. Coyote ends up at the bottom or a canyon after careening off a mountain on rocket-powered roller skates. Wile E. refers to himself as a “suuuper genius.” We laugh. Because we know he’s not. Whereas the Road Runner knows his limitations is in touch with his abilities. And lives to beep beep another day.
Without humor or irony, let’s consider why this counselor would vehemently advise a student to take a history course rather than a business one. To be fair, it is accurate that college admissions folks would prefer to see courses in English, math, social science, language, and science on the transcript rather than yoga, Frisbee, modern dance, and Evolution of the Corduroy Suit. Students with academic classes—the most sophisticated curriculum their high school has to offer—have an advantage over students who have enjoyed less serious schedules.
But the differential in admissions decisions is so modest as to be meaningless. Rejection factories posing as elite colleges turn down the majority of valedictorians, the bulk of students with perfect SAT scores, kids with 11 AP classes. Taking business rather than history decreases this student’s chances of admission from 5% to 4.997%, a distinction without a difference.
Why is the counselor so invested in this student taking history rather than business? Charitably, the counselor may have been instructed by higherups to fill the history classes rather than the business ones. The high school doesn’t want to fire a history teacher and hire an instructor in the business department. Or maybe the counselor is dating a history teacher and wants to make sure their friend keeps their job.
But I think the more likely explanation is that the counselor wants to emphasize their knowledge of an admissions process into which their insight in modest. The counselor wants to show off. At the expense of the needs of their student. Bad plan. Nobody likes a show off. Less than nobody likes a show off who is hopelessly wrong.
We all like to be right. Everybody appreciates being respected. Many counselors want to demonstrate their insight into the admissions process. A stock broker who isn’t savvy about investments, a doctor who can’t distinguish adenomyoepithelioma from malaria, a counselor who can’t say unequivocally which students will be admitted where—all would have to prove their worth to their jobs in some other meaningful way. But nobody likes a showoff. And before counselors, (and teachers, and parents) pontificate about the depths of their smartosity, wouldn’t it be great if their opinions were at least a little bit valid and meaningful?
