The Best Days of Our Lives

December 13, 2017 11:04 AM

Are you having a bad day? Would you like to see some videos of people having a GREAT day and share in their excitement? How about some kids getting into college? Warning: there is screaming. Lots of it. Big article with many examples of the genre. More below the fold, if your eardrums can handle it.

Would she like to go to Princeton? I think she would.

How about MIT? Would you like to go to MIT?

Alex Little is accepted to Stanford…

and then his brother Ayrton Little is accepted to Harvard a few days later.

Rion gets accepted to the Clemson Life program.

EXTRA CREDIT for SPORTS:

Jose Berrios is drafted by the Twins in 2012. This is my favorite. Every time I see this video, I hold it together until the band starts to play. There IS crying in baseball.

posted by Elly Vortex (21 comments total)

In my day, you had to go to your mailbox, and you knew by the size of the envelope.

Then it meant going to a computer.

Then it meant opening your laptop.

Now it's down to a cellphone.

I am not looking forward to my kids finding out by a USB-neural interface..
posted by ocschwar at 11:38 AM on December 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

"I am not looking forward to my kids finding out by a USB-neural interface.."

It uploads sorrow or elation directly into your neural matrix.
posted by sutt at 11:49 AM on December 13, 2017 [6 favorites]

In my day, you had to go to your mailbox, and you knew by the size of the envelope.

My father saw the envelope in the mail, then drove over 30 minutes to our high school at 7:30pm. We had an academic competition that evening. I was in a classroom with my team, doing some last minute prep. Then there was my father, banging on the door, envelope in hand.
posted by slipthought at 12:07 PM on December 13, 2017 [12 favorites]

My mom came barging into my classroom with the envelope too. I think she might have opened it first, so already knew the good news o_O

This was in the time of early acceptance, so not all of my friends had submitted applications, much less gotten a response. It was also my only acceptance, so good thing it was my first choice!
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 12:14 PM on December 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

When I got my undergrad acceptance letter, I was at home by myself. I had to tell SOMEONE so I went and told the lady next door. She was happy for me, of course, but it was a bit awkward.
posted by Elly Vortex at 12:22 PM on December 13, 2017 [8 favorites]

I could only afford one application fee, so I couldn't waste it on a school I wasn't already 100% sure I'd be accepted to. The letter, when it came, was a formality.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:28 PM on December 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

My parents opened my envelope while I was at my movie theater job one evening.

Since I had applied early admission too, I never had another acceptance envelope to open.

I'm fine about it. Really. It's... I'm fine.
posted by e to the pi i at 1:22 PM on December 13, 2017 [7 favorites]

My father opened my acceptance letter too. And I genuinely am fine with that. I was sitting in one of my classes when one of the guidance counselors came to the class and asked to speak to me out in the hallway. She then told me that my father had opened the letter from NYU and had just called the school, asking for someone to go find me and inform me that I had been accepted.

I sometimes wonder what it'd have been like in the classroom - to see me getting called out, everyone sitting there wondering what tragedy had just gone down that the guidance counselor had come to pull me out of class; only to then suddenly hear me shriek "ACCEPTED??????? at the top of my lungs.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:33 PM on December 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

When I went to college I only applied to one place. At the time, it was withering away, barely 5000 students. They were begging for students.
posted by humboldt32 at 1:57 PM on December 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

The first acceptance letter I got was Purdue, which wasn't my first choice school, so I was pretty meh about the whole thing. I only applied to Purdue because it was free back then, and apparently, I had filled in their code on the SAT. I was 100% sure I was going to U Florida. It was only after I was accepted to Purdue that I did any research and realized I was accepted to one of the top engineering schools in the county (as an out-of-state student).

I sometimes wonder how different my life would have been if I hadn't randomly filled in the Purdue code on the SAT.
posted by COD at 2:09 PM on December 13, 2017 [5 favorites]

Nah, I'm bitter. I want videos of people having worse days.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:27 PM on December 13, 2017

Like, I want to re-live the college fun of drawing the daily short straw and accompanying my pre-med friends to their mailbox to see if they had gotten accepted, rejected or there was (even worse) no letter.

That was some solid visceral pain. I could dig someone having a worse day right now.
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:32 PM on December 13, 2017

I had to login and check a website at midnight to find out if I was accepted.
I wanted to make sure everything worked perfectly so I tested my login at 6PM. Unexpectedly it loaded and said I was accepted.

I wasn't ready.
posted by matrixclown at 2:51 PM on December 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

Back in my day, you pretty much had your answer once you opened the mailbox; it was pretty easy to gauge by envelope thickness.
posted by halation at 3:06 PM on December 13, 2017

Yup, "thick or thin?" was on everyone's minds when they opened the mailbox.
posted by Elly Vortex at 3:08 PM on December 13, 2017

Envelope-spotting in my day, too. Except I was waitlisted at two schools, and those envelopes were also thick. Almost worse, that letdown.
posted by minervous at 3:35 PM on December 13, 2017

I applied to four schools, and waited till I had envelopes from all of them, and then opened them all at once. I figured it'd be easier emotionally than sitting with a rejection for several days, to open a couple of 'yes'es and a couple of 'no's all in succession, and I wasn't wrong.
posted by xo at 4:14 PM on December 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Only tangentially related but if you want to see young people freaking out with happiness, go to this video of Southern University students reacting to the CNN election countdown breaking news in 2008.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:45 PM on December 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

I also had the click-this-link-to-this-online-portal experience. I found out I was accepted to my first choice first, which softened the sting of some later rejections/waitlists. I remember clicking whatever link it was and being redirected to a URL that was ThickEnvelope.collegename.edu, so that was cute.
posted by coppermoss at 5:37 PM on December 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

1. Opening my mailbox to see The Big Envelope from my first choice school after I'd been deferred was one of the best moments of my life up to that point. Looking back as an adult, I wish I hadn't been so emotionally wound up in the idea of going to a particular college, and I'm glad that I can't imagine having that strong an attachment to being accepted or rejected by something now. But I wouldn't trade that memory.

2. My senior year at that college, I confidently (I can say now: smarmily) opened up a Big Envelope from my first choice AmeriCorps program in front of a bunch of friends, "well well well, if it isn't my old friend Big Envelope" which is how I found out that's how AmeriCorps sends their rejection letters.
posted by jameaterblues at 8:27 PM on December 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Pro tip: Don't send your high school senior on an exchange trip to France during Spring Break when all the college news comes in. He'll be in France when he's rejected by his #1 school and you'll be in the US, unable to hold him while he sobs.
posted by cooker girl at 5:44 AM on December 14, 2017