Eternal Investments

Remember Maggie?  She is a part of our family this year.  Grace still insists on calling Maggie her big sister, though today she said worriedly, “Mommy, is Maggie going to leave us soon?” 

Now why would she say a thing like that?

Maybe because I just happened to hyperventilate today when I saw the package Maggie got.  FedExed.  From Stanford University.  Yeah.  I’m from California, and grew up 40 minutes away from Stanford, yet they never FedExed me anything. 

We knew a couple of weeks ago that Maggie got accepted to Stanford and MIT, but she didn’t receive her financial aid package until today.  (FedExed–did I mention that?)  It says:  Parent contribution:  $0.  Student contribution:  $0.  They even gave her money for books.  And airfare. 

Oh my word.  Do you think they want her to come?

My best friend in high school was valedictorian.  I wasn’t too far behind.  Where did we go to college?  San Jose State University.  Not sayin’ there’s really that much difference, of course, between Stanford and SJSU.  Oh–you haven’t heard of it?  Well, your loss.

When I went to high school, everyone pretty much talked about their three college choices:  SJSU, West Valley Community College or De Anza Community College.  Here, at HOPAC, so far this year students have been accepted to Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale.  And MIT and Stanford, of course.  Among others.  And there’s only 25 students in the class.  Um, yeah.  Did anyone from my graduating class go to any of those schools? 

I just kept staring at that piece of paper.  Never seen anything like it. 

And you know what else?  She’s probably going to turn it down.  She hasn’t received her MIT package yet, but that’s her first choice, and we’re all guessing it will be just as good. 

We’ve always known, teaching at HOPAC, that we would be impacting students who have the capability of changing the world.  Since this is only HOPAC’s third graduating class, we haven’t been able to really see the fruit of that investment yet. 

But now we are.  Maggie wants to return to Tanzania and help change her country.  After she majors in aerospace engineering at MIT, of course.  To God be the glory.