Two years after that, I graduated as valedictorian of our competitive high school with a full academic scholarship to undergraduate. I delivered the address in front of two thousand people and walked off the field hoping for something I could not name precisely but which had to do with being seen. My parents were near the bleachers. My father was checking email. My mother adjusted her sunglasses and told me my speech had been long and full of complicated words and that next time I should try to be more entertaining. We drove home in silence. I ate cold chicken from the refrigerator while they watched television.
That night I made the decision that would cost me several years of sleep and one relationship with the banking system, which was to aim for something so significant they would have no choice but to look at it. I wanted to be a pediatric surgeon. I understood that this was not a rational response to a dinner where no one congratulated you on your valedictorian address, but rationality was not what was driving it. I wanted to build something undeniable.
I finished undergraduate at the top of my class. I took the MCATs, did the interviews, survived the waiting period that every pre-medical student knows is its own form of psychological endurance sport. In early spring of my senior year, on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, I received the acceptance letter from one of the top five medical programs in the country. I sat on my apartment floor and cried until I ran out of breath, then I bought a bottle of wine with the last twenty dollars in my checking account and drove to my parents’ house for Sunday dinner.
I waited until the plates were cleared, then I slid the acceptance letter across the polished mahogany table to my father. The financial aid packet was behind it. I explained that I was not asking for cash. I had partial academic scholarships. The remaining tuition and living costs required graduate loans, and because I was twenty-two years old with a student work history at minimum wage, I needed a parental co-signer to access them. Just a signature. A name on a form.
My father did not open the folder. He looked at the embossed logo on the cover and pushed it back across the table with one finger. He said the financial risk was too significant. He said they had been reviewing their portfolio and could not take on that kind of liability right now. He suggested I defer enrollment or consider a less expensive career path.
