Mine were the days of the classic thick and thin envelopes. Thick meant a welcome packet, maybe a bumper sticker and a whole lot of warm and fuzzies — a college had accepted you! A thin envelope meant exactly two things: rejection and copious moping, possibly while listening to some heart-rending Backstreet Boys tracks.
Don’t judge. It was the ’90s.
I think we had it easier back then. During those stressful, heady days in April (or November for early decision applicants) at least there was only one time of day when we could look for responses from colleges — when the snail mail came. Now, every poor kid with an Internet connection can conceivably spend hours staring at their email accounts every day until messages from the schools of their dreams enter their inboxes.
Take that maddening premise, mix in a healthy dose of teenage hormones and … well, I’m impressed all college-bound teens today haven’t gone batpoop insane.
That’s why I’m especially sympathetic to the plight of nearly 300 students who received errant acceptance emails from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. The university sent those same students rejection notices only days earlier, but the new emails left at least some thinking that they really had gotten in and that the initial rejections were flukes.
Alas, the reverse was true. Once the students soon learned that their rejections were, in fact, real, their hopes were dashed (again) and some parents were downright angry — understandably so.
“You don’t crush somebody’s feelings twice,” Cathy Stephenson, the mother of one student, told The Washington Post.
As crushed as the students might feel, there is a silver lining to this collegiate cloud. I’d say a few valuable life lessons could be gleaned from this debacle, such as:
Always double check your recipient line before you hit “send.”
Universities aren’t the only entities to face grave embarrassment following an email mishap. No matter how careful your kid is with his e-mail, he could be even more so after falling victim to Hopkins’ mistake.
Don’t jerk people around because it makes them feel terrible.
Whether it’s a case of making tentative plans with a friend, wooing a romantic prospect, or deciding whether to let someone matriculate at your leafy campus, sending someone mixed signals is never a nice thing to do.
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
This depressing adage is well-worn for a reason — it accurately describes far too many situations. That gorgeous sweater being sold for next to nothing … will have you itching like you’ve got scabies. That time-share salesman who promises you’ll get a great prize at the end of a “short” presentation … will eat up six hours of your time and leave you with one free diet Coke. And yes, your dream school that first rejected you and later supposedly changed its mind … was just experiencing technical difficulties.
Life goes on.
It might take a day, a week, or a month, but I predict all the rejected would-be Hopkins’ students will recover from this ordeal. Teens applying to colleges tend be pretty self-selecting, so those who choose to apply to Hopkins likely have strong high school records … which in turn indicates that they shouldn’t have trouble gaining acceptance to at least a couple of other schools. My guess is that by this time next year, the teens hurt by the Hopkins mix-up will be so busy living the exciting lives of college freshmen that this fiasco will be but a distant memory.
And if time doesn’t heal all wounds, might I suggest the dulcet tones of the Backstreet Boys?
Image courtesy of ThinkStock