I am writing this letter to express my gratitude to you. In my class, Psychology and the Good Life, we were tasked with writing a letter to the person who helped us get to Yale. For me, that person is you.

Sometimes I imagine where I would be if it weren’t for that rainy evening sometime in October of my junior year of high school. We all met (you, my family, and me) around the glass table of the OPA room after my play rehearsal. I remember you asked me what schools I was thinking about. I told you my shopping list, and you asked about Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Those schools were notably absent. I shrugged my shoulders and you said something to the effect of, “Why not?”

Now, as I write this, I am sitting in Bass Library of Yale University. There is a man to my left who won’t stop coughing. I have three papers to write that I have not started (as you can see, not much has changed), I’m going to a friend’s EP release party tonight, and the Johnathan Edwards Dining Hall is serving Cellentani with Swiss Chard and Lamberti Sausage for dinner. I am so incredibly happy.

It’s curious to think about how much you must have believed in me. You saw something in me that I could not see, or maybe something I refused to see. Failure was one of my biggest fears. The thought of failing would sometimes keep me up at night. In the dark, I would flex my fingers and listen to the joints click as I stared at my postered ceiling, my mind whirling at 100 miles per hour. That fear kept me from pursuing opportunities I should have. It kept me from trying too hard or putting too much of myself into my aspirations. It kept me from dreaming too big.

Yale was too big in my mind. But you, Keith, brought it closer. You plucked this gloried institution from the loftiest reaches of my imaginations, brought it down to earth, and made it life sized. It took some convincing, some prodding and a lot of reprimands, but I eventually began to see it, too.

Thank you, Keith. Thank you for guiding me through Friends’ Central. Thank you for the hours and hours of SAT prep and stress. Thank you for listening as I rambled about my ten favorite memories, and thank you for providing such profound insight into my life. Thank you for editing my papers, forcing me to write three personal statements, making me go on colleges tours, pushing me, encouraging me, challenging me, not being my fan, and helping me get here— my dream school.

Thank you for believing in me.

Your friend,

Noelle