my name is maya walker & i am a prospective student
at your institution. i am interested in english literature.
spanish language. classics. studying abroad. i am interested
in a small school in a big city; a big school in a small
city; a campus within a city, like nyu but not nyu. nothing rural,
nothing suburban. i can’t stand suburbia: house after
house after house in a row. one of them is my house, my
childhood house now. the house i’m moving out
of to come to your institution. no, university, not institution.
institution sounds like an asylum & i’ve had enough
of those. what’s that? no, i’m not insane. just deranged enough
to apply to your school out of all the schools, your school
with little mental health resources & no family to help me through
my panic attacks. oh, i’m sorry. not panic attacks. let’s call
them anxiety episodes, nervous fits, the jitters. anything to make
them sound less scary. anything to make me not a hazard to
your university. i promise i’m a good student. i promise i’ll try to be
a better student. i promise i’ll try to be a better student than
the ones who’ve dropped out after their first semesters, the ones
who realized they weren’t fit for life away from home. i promise
i’m fit for life away from home. why else would i be applying here?
it’s so far. it’s so close. it’s so urban; i can get lost in the
buildings & people & say at least i’m not alone when i’m tired of not
being heard, of being not good enough for you. dear university,
i promise i’m good enough for you. i promise i won’t give up on you like
i gave up on high school sophomore year. that was a fluke. i’ll never
give up on anything again. dear university, i’m applying because you’re
my safety school. because you’re my reach school. because i have
no other choice. i’m applying because i’m tired of my home. i’m applying
because nothing on campus reminds me of home, & i like it that
way. I’m applying because what choice do i have, because i have to go
somewhere. i’m applying because i need a fresh start, because
i always have one on your campus. thank you for your consideration.
Maya Walker is an avid reader, tea drinker, and lover of words. She is the founder and editor in chief of Fulminare Review as well as an executive editor at Spiritus Mundi Review and a staff writer for Immortal Journal. You can read her work at The Augment Review, Ice Lolly Review, Fifth Wheel Press, and others, or find her at the abyss of ink known colloquially as the Instagram page @maya_whispers_words.