She put her hand at the top of the folder and pushed it all the way to me. She then clasped her hands together, dropped them into her lap, and said, Please open it!
I jumped at her voice, then did as she said. In the center prongs were creamy-feeling pages that explained the lab, the experience I would get, the projects I’d contribute to, and near the end, a page explaining the scholarship money for housing and the travel subsidies and something called a stipend. I figured out quickly, thanks to the numbers being stacked on top of each other like in my Rawlings bill, that a stipend meant I’d get paid to be there. I wanted to grab the folder and run to the dorm, show it to Jillian and ask if it was real. The experience alone was worth it: I would’ve gone for free—no, I would’ve taken out another loan to go all the way to California and work in a real lab, a for-real lab run by Professor Kaufmann. I was taking out bigger loans for less interesting experiences. I flipped back to the pages describing the projects, recognizing in some of them the language from Professor Kaufmann’s faculty Web page. She’d singled me out to be part of her research, part of her network. I turned past those pages before looking too eager and embarrassing myself.
Tucked inside the folder’s back pocket was the application. It asked for a short essay about why I was interested in the program and how I came to find out about it (though small, the program was open to applicants all over the country). It asked for a list of past research experiences and other extracurricular activities (freshmen were allowed to list activities from their senior year of high school, which made me feel much better) and a short explanation about how each extracurricular had furthered or enhanced my interest in research. It asked for a reference letter and the contact information for your reference—Professor Kaufmann had already signed this form and written, on a Post-it note pressed to the top right corner, Lizet: Don’t worry about this page. It asked for a copy of a graded lab write-up. It asked for a transcript, for my grades.
Despite being proud of my B-minuses because I understood what lived behind them, I was fully aware they were not great grades by Rawlings standards. Professor Kaufmann had no idea that my GPA was below a 3.0. My work in her class—I was sure of this because it was my goal—reflected the grades I wanted, not the ones my past mistakes had shaped: put a line through it and keep going. I pulled out the checklist of the application’s required parts from the folder. My hands shuddered as I held it, so I let it drop to the bench, only pointed, for a second, at the line that said Official Transcript.
—I think my grades –
I felt something sharp rise in my throat. I wanted so badly not to confess this to her, to preserve her idea of me being fantastic in lab. I swallowed, but it didn’t go away.
—You get that from the registrar. Official only means it is sealed in an envelope.
—It’s not that.
I pointed to the line again, then put my hands in my lap. I breathed in through my nose, willing my voice to come out at its natural pitch. Then I said something I’d never said before.
—My grades are not very good.
She blinked, the half smile never leaving her face.
—Oh, I’m sure they are more than fine.
The same phrase from her e-mail, the one that had made me worry. Her English was always perfect, but as I searched for reasons why she wouldn’t understand me, for why she was making me admit my incompetence again, I let language be one of them. I closed the folder but left it where it was on the bench.
She asked, What’s your GPA?
So I told her.
—Oh, she said. Then her smile came back, her spine straightened. But what is it in your science and math courses?
I could almost hear her rationale floating from her brain to mine: she’d defaulted to Occam’s razor—all other things being equal, go with the simplest solution—so of course the problem was some wayward grade in an English or history course. Those pesky humanities! That must be it! Many a fantastic biologist had been foiled by a required literature course.
—The same, I said. It’s the same.
She blew air from the side of her mouth. It billowed through her bangs.
—Well that doesn’t make any sense, she said. Your grades should be higher.
I winced. They should, I said.