{"id":51,"date":"2008-01-21T08:12:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-21T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admissions.me.holycross.edu\/2008\/01\/21\/the-joy-of-application-reading\/"},"modified":"2008-01-21T08:12:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-21T12:12:00","slug":"the-joy-of-application-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/2008\/01\/21\/the-joy-of-application-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"The Joy of Application Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/me.holycross.edu\/blogimages\/drew.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Drew\" \/> \u201c. . . he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother&#8217;s shoulder, and said, \u201cBird by bird, buddy.\u00a0 Just take it bird by bird.\u201d<\/em><br \/>\nAnne Lamott, Bird by Bird<\/p>\n<p>In my first blog posting of the year (I\u2019m sure you all have it committed to memory), I claimed that if you spent too much time with your nose in the college guide books, the college search would seem like an overwhelming 4th grade project on birds.<\/p>\n<p>Well, now the shoe is on the other foot &#8212; it is our turn.\u00a0 As I sit here on Sunday afternoon watching the perfect Patriots on television, I am distracted (marginally) by the stack of applications on my coffee table.\u00a0 When considered as a whole, reading these applications can be overwhelming.\u00a0 But the only thing for us to do is to simply tackle these applications one at a time, bird by bird.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/holycrossadmissionsblog.typepad.com\/photos\/uncategorized\/2008\/01\/22\/coffeetabletn.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/me.holycross.edu\/blogimages\/coffeetabletn.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Coffeetabletn\" width=\"100\" height=\"75\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And when you take that approach, reading applications can be (gasp!) fun.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read some wonderful essays so far this year about the determination of female preemies, a lesson learned from a French girl at summer camp or even something as simple as a swim in the ocean.<\/p>\n<p>So I guess what I want to say is thank you.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for telling us about your Eagle Scout project.<br \/>\nThank you for having the guts to take Calculus.<br \/>\nThank you for fessing up to that mistake.<br \/>\nThank you for sending us a Christmas card.<br \/>\nThank you for sending that CD of you playing the violin (Bach was my favorite).<\/p>\n<p>Thank you for applying.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew N Carter<br \/>\nAssociate Director of Admissions<br \/>\nCollege of the Holy Cross<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c. . . he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother&#8217;s shoulder, and said, \u201cBird by bird, buddy.\u00a0 Just take it bird &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/2008\/01\/21\/the-joy-of-application-reading\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Joy of Application Reading&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":615,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-carter","category-other"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/615"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.holycross.edu\/admissions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}