Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
HIGH schools nowadays seem to be churning out drones of 'ideal' students - you know the ones - 2200 SAT scores, 4.0 GPA, class valedictorians, distinction piano players, captain of their volleyball teams etc.
It's so impressive, it's almost clichŽ.
These laudable merits and accolades have become almost basic prerequisites for any university application.
I sometimes wonder how admission officers, sitting with their sleeves rolled up, hands filled with sheaves of finely-typed papers, sift through hundreds of nearly identical applications and pick a winner from the pack.
It's like choosing the best fruit from a carton of polished apples. All crunchy, none tangy.
However, the 'Ivies' and the rest of the 'crme of the academic elite' continue to lure in prospective freshmen fanatics.
It has come to a stage where students, as early as those from Grade 8, are rigorously trained to jump through preset hoops, to tick in every box on their university applications.
Over-achiever. Check. Persistent Slogger. Check. Missed out on life. Check.
What happened to the avid blogger that taped on his keyboard, silently and determinedly, through the night, to let the world know about his revolutionary ideas for exploiting solar energy? What happened to the imaginative photographer that created avant-garde pieces of art, gracefully illuminating the human condition? What happened to the teenage philanthropist that spent most of his weekends tending to sick animals?
Their innate skill, zest and compassion paled before the robotic precision of the 'Ideals'.
Their bags of numbers were outweighed by those of their fellow skilled test-taker counterparts. They were crushed by the outrageous academic expectations of society.
Thousands of teenagers around the world apply to university, with high hopes and lengthy rŽsumŽs, wanting to make a difference in the world.
Instead of students being discriminated against for the very reasons that make them unique as individuals, universities should really view their candidates holistically.
Our society's academic biases and numerical predilections confuse me. We are always weighed against our age, our grades or our salaries. Our qualitative aspects are sadly overlooked in this big bad world of quantification.
But if we are just that - a manifestation of numbers, what really distinguishes us from machines?
