By that point, I was a senior at Hunter College, pursuing a degree in history and minors in linguistics and English. I thanked him profusely, but didn’t see James again for another four years or so. But he brushed it off, as if it was a nonissue. A perfect stranger had given me hours of his professional time - free - and I couldn’t even pay for breakfast. When I went to pay for the breakfast, however, my credit card was declined and I was mortified. Through our conversation, I felt James’s confidence rub off on me and my fear of failure dissipate. I was never that close to bacon, and it was distracting: It smelled like pastrami but was a little off, like being on a blind date with someone who is charming and likable but there’s no romantic spark. “What are you saying?” I asked when he stopped for breath and another slice of bacon. He told me a little bit about himself: He had gone to the fancy prep school where “Dead Poets Society” was filmed and had taken four years of Latin there.Īt one point, through bites of bacon and eggs, he started speaking in a strange dialect. He walked me through my difficulties with subject-verb agreements and showed me how to “hack” large passages of text in order to answer reading comprehension questions.Īt one point, we moved our study session to a nearby diner and James talked while I furiously scribbled notes in the back of an old SAT book with yellowing pages. He taught me the tricks to multiple-choice, and how to strategically answer math questions that I didn’t recognize. He spent hours with me that day demystifying the test-taking and application process and sharing study tools that I still find useful. I imagined being mentored by men in tweed jackets sitting in oversize armchairs, our faces illuminated by a crackling fire.Īnd James was supportive of that (although possibly amused by my vision of college). But I passionately wanted to go to school, to foster a curiosity that could not be sated with Talmud. Here was someone who held the logical keys to a foreign world I aspired to succeed in: college.Īt 22, one glance at the college essay prompts would plunge me immediately into self-doubt. He charged almost 300 dollars an hour, but he got results: Some students added over 700 points to their exams. He framed the SAT not as a test of knowledge but of “college readiness,” and wrote about his strategies for, say, making “Beowulf” relatable to a high schooler. AMA.” AMA, in Reddit-speak, means “Ask Me Anything.” This generous citizen was answering questions in real-time about how he tutored the best and brightest of the Manhattan prep crowd. One day I came across a post that caught my eye: “ IAmA SAT/ACT tutor at the top end of the market in Manhattan. The site has everything, from photos of the cutest kittens to long posts by NASA engineers about designing vehicles for the International Space Station.
I was particularly drawn to Reddit, which is essentially a mix of popular, crowdsourced links and conversations. The internet provided solace and distraction, a community of fellow lonely people. Although I was back in the community I grew up in, I felt different from everyone I knew.
It was 2011 and I had recently dropped out of a Maryland rabbinical seminary and moved back into my parents’ house in Brooklyn. This is the story of an internet connection that has nothing to do with romance. Two weeks later, we met in person at a Barnes & Noble. I chose "Doctoral" and "Thesis" as the two categories: The following essay received a grade of 72 -> C, based on college grading scale.
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