My Wish List

Each week for the past few weeks we have had the luxury of being able to write about whatever we want in our blog posts.  Nevertheless, each week I try to relate my posts to something happening in class.  This week I have decided to take this freedom to write about something I want for Christmas.

In A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf, all Mary (Woolf’s narrator) wants is money and a room of her own in order to write fiction.  Money is a tangible item that one can obtain, but if one is a woman like Mary in the early 20th century, it is hard to obtain money on one’s own without a husband or a father.  A room of one’s own could possibly be considered a tangible thing.  A physical room with walls is a tangible thing, but the idea of a room of one’s own is not a tangible item.  The desire for privacy is intangible.  It cannot be bought.

As we get closer and closer to Christmas, everyone in my family keeps asking for my Christmas Wish List.  They want to know what to buy me.  As a child my list would go on for pages and pages with items like Chat Nows, Tamagotchis, Webkinz, a digital camera, and a karaoke machine.  This year however I have no list.  There are many things I really want, but none of them are tangible items that can be bought.  It is aggravating when the things one desires no longer can be bought at Target.

The number one item on my Wish List this year is an acceptance letter to one of my top choice colleges.  Even just one acceptance letter to one of my dream colleges would vindicate years of balancing schoolwork, homework, and extracurricular activities.  I care deeply about academic achievement, and I am the type of person who stays up until two in the morning in order to complete all of my homework and study for tests in order to achieve the best possible grades.  For the past four years (and even in middle and elementary school) I have stressed and worried about grades.  I have worked as hard as I can forgoing friends, sleep, and fun just to do well in school.  I have heard over and over that “It doesn’t matter where you go to school.  It matters what you do wherever you go.”  I understand that this is mostly true, and I am sure that no matter where I go, as long as I work hard, I will be able to achieve whatever I want and have a great life.  However, while I have certainly learned a lot by working as hard as possible, getting into just one great school would feel like a reward and recognition of all my efforts.  Unfortunately, an acceptance letter to an amazing college will not be under the tree this year, no matter how badly my parents would like to fulfill my wishes and give it to me.