New York University

I had a dream once of transferring to NYU. I had a dream of defying all the expectations that had been piled on me since the day of my birth 18 some odd years ago. I would destroy the David Liu of my parents' creation and leave this wretched, good-for-nothing snob-monster of an Ivy League university. I would get out of this program designed specifically to teach me how to be rich and manipulate people's lives into higher numbered profit margins. I would shake the necessity to prove myself to anyone in a material world. I would study film in lower Manhattan, in Greenwich Village, at the Tisch School of Fine Arts at NYU. I would concentrate in Cinematography. I would drink a lot of coffee and smoke a lot of cigarettes, wear dark sunglasses at night, and make films. I would write and shoot and direct and edit and screen prolifically. I might even become a little notorious. But I wouldn't be in Philadelphia, and I wouldn't be at Penn. It'd all be behind me, the first 18 years of my carefully constructed life. I would be the artist I was meant to be. And I would be alone.

I was cleaning my room today, and found the Application for Transfer Students that I had printed out for NYU, buried underneath gum wrappers and Amnesty International flyers. I had thumbed through it so many times last semester, mulling over the essay questions and who I could give that recommendation letter to. I thumbed through it one more time, and with a sigh, tossed it in the trash. The deadline has passed, and so has the dream, gone from my life.

I know that this is my life.