I like to run in the mornings just before sunrise. In December the light rises slowly, a faint dispersion of color spreading up from the line of the horizon into lingering night. The darkness diminishes distance: I could run forever. This sense of possibility inheres ironically in my inability to see too far ahead. It’s easy to overcome limits you cannot see. And I try to cultivate this sense of possibility in my students, though optimism only takes deep root in authenticity.
I worked with a young man this fall and he wrote with such authenticity. He described the origins of his business enterprise. It was titled “Shopping for Shoes.” As he wrote, he captured that pure thrill of pursuit, of landing a coveted pair of Nikes at dawn, the leather in red and black nestled in yellow tissue. With time, he mastered the Nike “drops,” beating other buyers to purchase, scoring prime sizes and prime styles. From his expanding presence on instagram, he’d flip his shoes to avid buyers too busy to monitor sneaker apps or rise at 4 am for in person purchases and the long waits in Chicago cold, queuing around the corner to still sealed doors. The business grew. The young man honed his knowledge of customers, developed accounting spread sheets, hit 30,000 followers on Instagram. He worked across every American ethnicity from blacks of south city Chicago to famous rappers, college football players, and white boys from Wilmette. His essay was truly fine. In college, he would gain more expertise and his experience would grow. He saw no limits; he was running at dawn.
Gravity is real of course and limits arose. His father pressed him hard to try a different statement subject. Entrepreneurship, in the father’s view, would not serve his application well. The father even suggested he would not pay for college if the essay did not change. The young man weighed his choices and chose himself. He submitted “Shopping for Shoes” and all through the fall and into December he kept earnestly at his enterprise. He began to hear back from schools. Having cultivated possibility and having been true to his ambition, the young man has been accepted everywhere, several with merit scholarships, and a waitlist at one California school.
I think of him as I run in my own Nikes this morning…
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