High School in Spain

Most people have a dream vacation, I had a dream education when I was in high school. You see, I was born with two different-colored eyes and aside from the constant comments, it hasn't ever done much for me. If anything, it's a bad thing, as one of the side effects in my case is a lazy eye which could not be fixed in childhood. I think there's even a horror movie out now where having two different-colored eyes means you have a twin that died in utero that will haunt you for simply being born. But I digress. My point is, I used to have a fantasy daydream where my eyes would win me something, and the thing I wanted most in high school was to get out of high school, or at least public school, and see the world. I imagined up a wealthy Spaniard who would search the world, or just the U.S., for a kid to grant a private education, to be located at his villa outside Barcelona. His only criteria would be a boy, age 14, with, you guessed it, two different-colored eyes, and I would be the lucky recipient to meet that criteria. If there were other 14 year-old boys with different-colored eyes, I could have specified that the eyes be brown and green like mine, or narrowed the search pool to the state of New Mexico, as I'm pretty sure I was the only match in my area. In 30 years, I've only ever met one other person with eyes like mine in person, and that was getting off a bus in Brazil. I said to her, "you have two different-colored eyes!" and she responded, "yeah, so?" Anyway, it's supposedly a one-in-a-million trait.

Going back to my dream education, the Spaniard would rescue me from my boring, impersonalized school and fly me out to meet my new exotic, private tutors (as magical as Hogwarts, right? But REAL! And years before Harry Potter without the classroom setting or the mean instructors.) I mapped out four years of seven-hour days with seven AP exams (28 of the 37 total) at each year's end:

Freshman year - English Literature; Environmental Science; Algebra; Human Geography and World History; Psychology; Piano and Music Theory; Soccer and Basketball

Sophomore year - Latin Literature; Biology; Geometry; European and U.S. History; Art History and Studio Art; Trumpet and Jazz History; Tennis and Baseball

Junior year - Spanish Literature; Chemistry; Trigonometry; Macro- and Microeconomics; Computer Science; Classical Guitar and Composition; Hockey and Golf

Senior year - French Literature; Physics; Calculus; Government and Politics; Computer Science; Drums and Sound Engineering; Wrestling and Volleyball

I would also prepare three meals a day alongside a professional chef for all those living and working at the villa. I would train in the swimming pool in the morning and on my very own skate park at night. During the summer I would travel to historic places like the Egyptian pyramids, Athens, Rome, Istanbul, Jerusalem, Berlin, and Moscow. During the winter, I would ski and snowboard the Alps and visit my family for Christmas and my birthday. After four years, I would ace the SAT and ACT tests, and get serious scholarship money for any college of my choice. Needless to say, this fantasy is so far from my reality. Yes, I did graduate from public school. No, I didn't pass any AP exams. Yes, I did graduate from a college of my choice, albeit a smaller pool of choices. No, I didn't get serious scholarship money but I honestly think I would have been able to by writing essays about a unique experience in Spain. Why Spain? It's because growing up in New Mexico, I wanted to learn Spanish (and I did take it in high school), but I guess I thought learning it in Spain would make it somehow cooler. Now I laugh to think that I would have learned to speak with a lisp. One more question before wrapping this up - is a dream vacation the best thing I could come up with in high school? What about space travel, a pro sports stint, lottery money, or a girlfriend that's a celebrity model? Yes, I do think my dream vacation would have rivaled any of those things, and it's definitely more grounded in reality. I think the best dreams are less fantasy and more reality.