30 College Essays in 30 Days
Day 11: Sleep is Gold
Despite marrying into a Desi family, I don’t know much Urdu. But I have gotten a lot of mileage out of the few phrases I do know. “Sona sona hay,” is one of my favorites. It riffs off of the fact that the word for sleep is the same as the word for gold, so …
Day 12: The Unbearable lightness of Unsubscribing
When I discovered the “unsubscribe” button, everything changed. My inbox would give many people a case of the collywobbles. For years, I have let my various inboxes bloat with a rapidity that would make even my allergic-to-mowing neighbors blush. Just as weeds left unchecked will quickly overwhelm a neglected garden, so too has my poor …
Day 13: Orphan Son of an English Teacher
I often tell people that I was orphaned by my mother’s grading. My mom taught English for more than 33 years at the Winsor School, an all-girls’ school in Boston that is widely considered to be one of the best private schools in the country. I have no doubt that my mom was a huge …
Day 14: The Little Journal that Cloud
At the start of every year, I tell my students I’m about to give you a gift you can use to change the world. As they sit in nervous expectation, I reach into a paper bag and start handing out colorful composition notebooks. These little 80-page journals—50 cents each at Staples at the beginning of …
Day 15: The Magic of Fifteen
Every year a mischievous student who wants to really antagonize me will ask, “Why is a guy with a Harvard degree wasting his time at a school like this?” I know the whole “sticks and stones” routine, but these words cut a little too close to the bone. They ask a question I sometimes ponder …
Day 16: A Preppy WASM Finds A Wife
My five minutes of fame came early and quietly. In 2003, an article came out about me in the Boston Globe with the cringey headline, “A Preppy Wasp Finds Allah.” The article was written by our next-door neighbor and close friend of my sister, Beth Carney. The inspiration for the story came when Beth saw …
Day 17 : Recovering Islamic Banker
One of the beauties of a liberal arts education is that it opens up a smorgasbord of possibilities, but this is also one of its curses. When I arrived at college, I decided that I wanted to major, or, in Harvard’s pretentious jargon, “concentrate” in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. As a relatively new convert …
Day 18: Let's Go Mr. Haloo
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” My father would often share this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote with me when he felt I was becoming a bit too overwrought about adhering to a plan when variables changed. He was teaching me the value of flexibility and how I should always be willing to …
Day 19: Rich Dad, Poor Dad Redux
School does a pretty good job neglecting to teach students a lot of what they most need to know. Nowhere is this more true than in the realm of personal finance. Despite claiming to “prepare students for the 21st century workforce,” most schools do very little to prepare students for how to manage their finances …
Day 20: Golden B.O.O.O.T
As World Cup fever drains my students of the last vestiges of their attention span, I am reminded of one of my proudest moments as a teacher. During my 3rd year at my old school, I won an award that, until now, I have never been able to speak about: the Golden B.O.O.O.T. A takeoff …
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