This is the launch week for Debutante Amy Poeppel’s SMALL ADMISSIONS! Whip out that gift card already and go buy it! To celebrate, the Debs this week are writing on topics related to some of the book’s themes – parenting, school admissions, broken hearts, relationships and friendship. SMALL ADMISSIONS is a book with a helicopter parenting problem to the nth degree. Rich parents and entitled kids help form the backbone of…
Last week I was reading an article in the Washington Post about how my generation has been churning out helicopter parents who don’t want their kids to study literature or liberal arts. Curious, I inquired how many were history majors. Of the 24 honors students in the seminar, there were none. English? Philosophy? Fine arts? Only one. How was this possible? I asked. Almost in unison, half a dozen replied: “Our parents…
Unexpected friendships are, to me, something of an adult phenomenon. As kids, we see potential friendships everywhere – from people both real and imaginary. It’s only as we start getting older that we realize we might fit in with one group better than another. The divide usually begins somewhere around middle school and then intensifies in our high school years. People splinter into various cliques and groups, usually with similar…
So a song came up in my random lineup today. The song is called “Friends of P.”, and it’s by The Rentals, and the first time I ever heard it was the first semester of my freshman year of college. My roommate always had the college rock station on, so instead of my usual diet of Indigo Girls, Danny Elfman scores, and Sinead O’Connor, I listened to that. Isn’t it…
This week is not only graduation week, but it is also the week of my birthday. And so I reflect on another year gone by… This year has been incredibly eventful for me and for all the debs. We have all had to rise to the challenge of debuting our first book (just Kristina left to go—and I can’t wait to see her incredible success!). And at the end of…
I went to film school in Tallahassee, Florida. Not exactly a hotbed of film industry activity. In fact, the film school was pretty self-aware about that. In order to give us a few months’ jump on all of the other matriculating film school students across the country, they assigned us an additional summer’s-worth of classes and kicked us out the door in December of what would be our senior year….
Is it just me, or aren’t we all always transforming? Oh sure, I can pinpoint the major transformative moments in my life – going into the Peace Corps, becoming a mother, selling my first book. But if I think about it, there have been dozens, no hundreds, heck maybe thousands of smaller but equally as transformational events in my life. My first trip out of the country might have been…
By 17, I was in my second year at Simon’s Rock Early College, an experimental college in the Berkshires. I’m not sure anyone at home noticed when I left. My mother was ecstatically immersed in school (I’d never seen her so happy). She had already completed the rest of her undergraduate credits in record time and was now working towards a Masters in Philosophy. My younger sister and brother had…
I’ve never really been scared of things that go bump in the night. Sure, when I was little, I had the occasional paranoid conviction that something was lurking just outside my bedroom window or under my bed or in my closet. But somewhere along the way, life just ripped that fear out of me. It’s actually the scariest things that ever happened to me that have made me primarily convinced…
I used to be thoroughly mystified by people who had trouble with things ending. Whether it was the end of a play date, summer, movie, camp or school year, I always felt as if whatever it was had more than run its course. I loved my grammar school but didn’t understand the wracking sobs of my friends as they hugged me and didn’t let go. On the last day of…
