Rec Letter Fragments

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“I want to document for those incredulous the long, single graceful act of learning that I witnessed Anatoly execute over the course of the last nine months.”

   —attended Harvard University

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“A mixed-race young man in a world that likes to simplify, Lucas embodies a willingness to span different groups of friends, to play hard and learn hard, to be himself while changing forms, oozing into the cracks where maybe other people don’t pay attention or don’t go or don’t take the time to feel out.”

   —attended Chapman University

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“Commenting on how her disabled brother is ecstatic for his weekly ride on the local commuter train, Elsa demanded that we reconsider the parts of our lives that we deem tedious or take for granted.”

   —attended Harvard University

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“I watched him sit there reading about Kant, in a book by Will and Ariel Durant."

   —attended University of Iowa

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“She left school. A year passed. I began to imagine a world she may or may not have spent time in—I’ve never asked—in which young people sit in circles supporting each other, snow falls gently outside, and everyone does their best to do their best. When she came back as a senior, she was still a gem, and I could make out the same scintillating imperfections of her core. But now she was polished and glowing and lustrous.”

   —attended High Point University

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“James went on to do greater things.  I sat in the audience at his Sundance debut.  I read drafts of his treatments and gave notes while he was already working on new scripts, which taught me that writing thrives in contradiction. I met the actor friends, twice his age, who were glad to work under him and even to welcome him into their homes for extended stays. I was Jack Kerouac to his Dean Moriarty.  In short, I envied him because I was bookish and quiet while he was a talented doer who still managed to invent cool.”

   —attended Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU)

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“The more forgiving we become toward each other, the harder each of us tries to impress the other. We are ballerinas on the moon.”

   —attended University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA)

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“When the DJ dropped the bass, her gaze remained unbroken, but I swear I felt the floorboards splinter underneath her feet. Days later, she danced a little flourish walking back to her desk from la poubelle. I had known her as an intellectual, then a peddler of street cred. And suddenly she was this gentle little thing, Tchaikovskiing across the room on gossamer wings.”

   —attended University of California at Davis (UC Davis)

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“Now, a junior, Shin curls their hair in my classroom mirror without asking. Submitted, they asked me to smash apart an essay, critical, ‘mean and gay, like a drag brunch.’ What disappointment–nothing to bash. The beautiful of their prose is solitary and beyond reach, maybe like a Banksy.”

   —PFLAG Scholarship recipient and student at Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, University of South California (USC)

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“For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the mediocre and the greats;
I have measured out my life with paper weights.
I know the footsteps fading with a fading gait
From the students who matriculate
In far off states.” 

   —attended Willamette University

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