The following piece is satire and should not be misconstrued for actual reporting. Any resemblance to a student, staff or faculty member is coincidental.
In our new series, “Who is AU?” The Seagle will profile a new student every two weeks, in an attempt to highlight the hopes, dreams and aspirations of our diverse student body that hails from all corners of the New York tri-state area. We want to know more about the real you, and also the administration needs more propaganda to entice naive and innocent high school students.
Freshman Rebecca Hernandez is super mean for absolutely no reason, but she wrote her admissions essay about kindness. Now, she hopes to be an inspiration to other prospective students who are actually complete jerks but want to fool admissions.
“I told my high school guidance counselor her baby was ugly, so she got mad and wouldn’t help me with my college applications,” Hernandez said. “I was totally on my own, and I was honestly in a really dark place.”
So she “gambled” that her service trip would suffice for acceptance into American.
“But then I was like, those losers in admissions would eat up a bunch of crap about how my mission trip to take selfies with orphans in Sierra Leone changed my worldview on capitalism,” Hernandez added.
She was right. Admissions did eat it right up, and she was not only accepted but offered a place in the honors program and a half-tuition scholarship. Hernandez reports that she “totally knew those half-wits” would love her essay. Following her acceptance, she posted the exact amount of scholarship money she received on Facebook so her friend who got rejected from every school except North Dakota State could see.
Admissions counselor Deborah Heard says that she loved the complete and utter selflessness and philanthropy that Hernandez displayed in her admissions essay.
“I was really blown away,” said Heard. “It’s rare that we come across an essay in which the student speaks so genuinely and from the heart. When she launched into a lengthy description of how the malnourished orphans were fascinated by the glitter in her iPhone 10 case, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.”
“I dropped my phone in a well and made one of the kids get it for me,” Hernandez said. “The glitter case was the only way they could spot it through the piles of toxic sewage.”
Hernandez’s former friends say that, at first, they thought she was a decent person.
“She seemed kind of shy and quiet at first, so I started talking to her,” said freshman Gabby Shelley. “But then she told a homesick girl that her parents were better off without her, and I realized what a stone-cold person she really was.”
Hernandez’s classmates and professors also report being completely blindsided by her calculated insults and taunts. At first, she appeared to be a diligent, if not reserved and quiet student. All that changed the third day of class when she told her writing professor to “@#$% off” when he called on her.
“I was kind of in shock,” English and literature professor Gary Kane admitted. “She seemed so nice. She really had all of us fooled on that one.”
Hernandez continues to inspire those around her through her creative use of curse words at inappropriate times, taking money from homeless people and her general cold and dismissive attitude.
“You always hear that you have to get amazing grades, do community service and be the president of a dozen clubs if you want to get into a halfway decent college,” Hernandez said. “My mission is to show people that you can be yourself, trip blind people and still get a great education. Never let anyone tell you that being conceited, cruel, and selfish is going to hold you back. I’m living proof of that.”
Bobbie Armstrong is a sophomore in the School of Communication and a satire columnist at The Eagle.
