The Iowa Face Meets the Harvard Face

For seven years now, I've been telling people about my college experience in Iowa. First I was telling them that I was considering going to Iowa, then I told them I was definitely going to Iowa, then I told them I did go to college in Iowa, and now I have explain that I graduated from a college in Iowa. And yes, I'm from New York. And yes, I love New York. And no, I wasn't running away from family tensions, or following a boyfriend. I just wanted to go to Iowa. I know it's hard to understand. Sometimes I even had trouble understanding it. It's just that, well, I've always liked going to new and different places, and Iowa was new and different.

I never regretted my decision to go to college in Iowa. However, I sometimes regret telling people about it, because they almost invariably respond with the Iowa face. The Iowa face is this scruched-up, raised-eyebrowed incredulous look of confusion that asks "Why would you go there? Is there anything there? Is it the same as Idaho?" New Yorkers are really good at the Iowa face. For a long time, I've been resigned to a lifetime of seeing the Iowa face. I figure it's something that will follow me for the rest of my life. And maybe it will.

Recently, though, there was a new development in my educational career. First, I got accepted at one masters program. Then I got accepted at another one. And then I got accepted at Harvard.

Let me say first of all that I don't know where I'm going yet. All of my options are excellent so far, and I don't know how I'm going to decide. But I don't want to decide based solely on name power. I went to a tiny college in the middle of nowhere that nobody had ever heard of. I turned down several more well-known institutions in order to do that, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. I want to learn from that experience.

Not surprisingly, however, the rest of the world does not necessarily see things my way. In fact, the rest of the world pretty much freaks out completely when I say the word 'Harvard.' "Harvard" is a word that makes people widen their eyes and drop their jaws and ask you to repeat yourself multiple times ("Wait, you say you got into Harvard? Is that what you said? You got in? Are you sure?") "Harvard" makes people see you in a whole new light. You can see their impressions of you as a person slowly shift. Suddenly you're not just that girl with the brown hair anymore. Suddenly you are that girl with the brown hair who got into Harvard. You know that famous scientist that taught dogs to salivate at the sound of a ringing bell? Well, the world has apparently taught human beings to have a similar reaction to the word "Harvard."

I have to be honest: this totally, completely, freaks me out. I do not feel comfortable with this. I feel comfortable with the incredulous Iowa face; I've grown accustomed to that. But this new face? This new expression of admiration (and honestly, sometimes jealousy, and sometimes intimidation?) makes me feel weird as hell. All I really did was fill out a bunch of papers and forms about me, and send them to Boston.

I'm not trying to be modest here. Really, all I want is to decide on a graduate program and put this awful, lingering feeling of uncertainty to rest. And I have so many conflicting feelings myself about my potential options that reactions from the general public (who, with all due respect, are not usually intimately familiar with the ins and outs of different graduate programs for English teachers) are sort of making all of this harder. Like, sometimes I feel like I should definitely go to Harvard, because everyone thinks it's so great. And sometimes I think I can't imagine going there, because then I'm going to have to deal with the Harvard face for the rest of my life, plus the Iowa face, and I just don't think I can handle both of them at once. But neither one of these reasons is a good reason to choose a graduate program, you know?

I'm learning something interesting, though, and that something is this: The things that you, as a person, find most interesting about yourself are not necessarily the things that people will find interesting about you. For example, I think it's very interesting that I've traveled to lots of different places. I love to talk about places I have been. Sometimes I know that people are really, really bored of hearing me tell stories about places I have been (My sister usually roars "Oh my god, are you going to tell me about this AGAIN?) but I talk about them anyway. Luckily for me, many peoplelike to talk about travel. However, every now and then I'll run across someone who just doesn't care. I'll make a casual comment like "This one time I got on the wrong train and went to Romania by mistake!" or "Once I was teaching this class in Greece..." and these people will nod and respond with "Uh-huh. Where do you want to eat lunch?" But if you mention Iowa to these same people, their eyebrows will raise, they will look confused, and they will immediately start grilling you about why a New Yorker would ever want to go study in the middle of cornfields. As for Harvard, well, I guess we'll have to see about that one.