Letter to the OC

To: Seth Cohen

114 Vista Drive

Newport, The OC, California

From: Shelah the Blogger

Dear Seth,

Man, it sucks so bad that you didn't get into Brown. You should have, really, all things considered. I used to work as a college admissions counselor, so I know what schools like Brown are looking for: good extracurriculars (water polo team is good and getting your own comic book published really rocks), great grades (you said on Thursday night that you've had straight As since first grade, and I'm sure you didn't take the cupcake courses), presumably great SAT scores, and, most importantly, parents who could foot the entire bill. You and Summer deserved to be wearing your his-and-hers Nanook of the North parkas next winter. Maybe they made a mistake, maybe they decided not to take more than one student from Harbor, or maybe they really did hold it against you that you were too stoned to make it to your first interview, but whatever the reason, I can commiserate with you, because it really sucks.

But my sympathies aside, in a few years, you're going to realize that getting rejected from Brown may have been a good thing. And I don't mean that in the cosmic sense that something will happen to you at whatever school you do end up attending because things will certainly happen there that will make your life different than it would have been if you had gone to Brown (and for the record, my money is going on you and Summer ending up at Berkeley with Ryan and Marissa, but that's a whole other story). I just mean that up to this point, you've lived a pretty charmed life. Yeah, you had the nerd thing going on for a few years, but you're seriously the most charming nerd I've ever known from afar. You have really cool parents (though your dad is about to go off the deep end, I'm sorry to say), wealth, a girlfriend way hotter than you deserve, and all of the other good things. And this is your first brush with true disappointment. I know it's so tough, but in a lot of ways it's good that you're going through this at 18, because let me tell you, just like it's harder to learn a foreign language as you age, it's harder to learn to deal with disappointment as you get older.

Do I sound like I speak from experience? Because, you know, you and I have had pretty similar lives (aside from the fact that you're a male, live on the west coast and are fabulously wealthy). We are both classic overachievers and have had all of the privileges to make life easy. The main difference is that I didn't have to deal with my first real disappointment until I was more than a decade older than you are, and delaying life's first crushing blow doesn't mean you'll be better prepared for it.

But I'll let you in on a little secret-- although the first time hurts so much, you'll be better prepared for subsequent failures. So if you're feeling sort of blown away by this first major disappointment, I promise you, next time you try and try, and somehow, inexplicably, don't succeed, it won't hurt so much. Failure gets easier with practice.

So with that encouraging piece of advice, go and tell your parents. They're going to find out sooner or later. Knowing your dad, he's probably already on the phone with Rhode Island, trying to make friends with the deans. It will be hard, but you can do it.

Chin up, buddy.

Shelah

--originally published 4/8/06