Brain Spill Book Review #12

The Gatekeepers

By Jacques Steinberg

Setting

The Gatekeepers is a nonfiction book that takes place in the late 20th Century and the early 21st Century. The story is focused around the Wesleyan University.

Summary

The book follows Ralph Figueroa, an admissions officer at Wesleyan, as he advertises Wesleyan and as he decides whether or not to admit certain applicants or not.

Characters

Ralph Figueroa

Ralph was an admissions officer at Wesleyan at the time when the book took place. Ralph comes from a Hispanic family from southern California, and he feels connected to the students from bad backgrounds that apply to Wesleyan.

Julianna Bentes

Julianna is a prospective Wesleyan student who attended Harvard-Westlake school on scholarship. Being that she is ethnically Brazilian, African, and Caucasian, she dances, and she has good grades, she is one of the top students in the United States. 

Migizi Pensoneau

Migizi is a Native American attending a prep school. Although he had below-average grades before attending the prep school, Migizi's ethnicity and SAT scores make him attractive to quite a few schools, including Wesleyan.

Jordan Goldman

Jordan is a student from Staten Island who is an aspiring writer. Although told not to, Jordan wants to send samples of his writing with is application. He also  is best friends with Devin, a boy who cannot stand on his own. His friendship with Devin is what he writes about in one of his college essays.

Becca Jannol

Becca is the president of  Harvard-Westlake. She has average grades and SAT scores and she once accepted a marijuana-laced brownie. When the student who brought the brownies to school was caught, Becca was the only student to admit that she accepted a brownie. After Becca decides to write about this in her admissions essay, the reactions from colleges vary, though Ralph wants to get Becca into Wesleyan.

Aggie Ramirez

Aggie is from a Hispanic background. She attends a private school and is school president. She, unfortunately, has low SAT and senior year grades. The rest of her grades are fine, though. She also says that her bad senior grades are due to her overload of extracurricular activities. She is, though, a prospective student at Wesleyan.

Tiffany Wang

Tiffany is a northern Californian Asian-American. Tiffany had average grades and was active in extracurricular activities, but she fails to expand on them in her essay. She does have a chance at getting accepted at Wesleyan, though.

Conclusion

The book was very interesting and really gets the reader connected with the characters. The book does go off on several rabbit trails, though, but I liked it. 7 waffles out of 11.

From a wedding to the end of the world

In a land full of jubilation and joy, there was much joy and jubilation. Under the new great mayor, Vladimir, the city of Rurik had become bountiful and full of gold, jewels, crops, and other little joys in life that aren't necessary but make you just a little bit happier. Near the end of Novemtober, a wedding was to be held at the local cathedral. This wedding was to be the first wedding between citizens of the city of Rurik and the city of As-minora. A woman of As-minora had been sent from her home town to marry one of the great officials of Rurik. At the cathedral where the wedding was to be held, there live a funny little priest named Finnilwicky. The great priest of As-minora had stepped aside, humbly, allowing Finnilwicky to perform the whole wedding ceremony. The wedding was going quite smoothly and everyone was happy until it happened. The door opened and a foreign traveler with armor and a spear came inside and slumped down in the back seat of the church. The whole crowd turned around and saw this strange man, not even wearing a tie, and showed their displeasure silently. Finnilwicky, himself, was also very displeased. His very, very clean church was now getting dirty at the hands of the traveler. Nonetheless, he continued the ceremony, but then the man started making a racket and started booing the couple to be wed. When the men in the church tried to get the man out, the man attacked them with his spear. The man broke up the whole ceremony and put all of the people except for the priest in the jail, which he had also overran. The priest fell to his knees and wept. What a terrible thing to happen on his first major wedding ceremony. Then the priest decided to go and give the strange traveler a good talking to, but when he went out to talk to that man, he found that the man had put all of the people of the town in jail. When the priest walked up to the traveler, the sky suddenly filled with clouds and lightning started hitting all tall, metallic objects. Then there was a huge whoosh, and the two looked to see a large wave coming directly at them. At the same time, an earthquake rumbled and split the land, leaving only the area where the two were standing in tact. The water from the wave filled in the gap that the earthquake had made. Then the world heated up a whole lot, leading to instantaneous desertification of all the land not already submerged by water. Then a huge blizzard came and froze all the water and then it started snowing. Then the sun went out and the moon started hurtling towards the earth. When the moon hit the earth, the plot of land that the priest and the traveler were standing on shot out into space and turned into an asteroid with an atmosphere, becoming the dwarf planet, New Earth, because the rest of the earth had been blown up, and the traveler and the priest had to live on the same asteroid for the rest of their lives.

College Road Trip -Days 3 & 4

On days two and three of the College Road Trip were the first official days of seeing colleges. We saw UC San Diego and UC Irvine.

Monday, July 19, 2010; 7:18pm

We finally made it to one of the colleges on our list of colleges to go to. We made it to UC San Diego. UC Merced is puny compared to UC San Diego. I liked the fact that UC San Diego is broken into 6 different colleges based on your wants for your classes. I also liked the Geisel Library, the buildings, and the fact that you can sign up for a radio slot. We went to a restaurant called Currants and then drove down to Irvine. Too bad we are miss Comic Con by only one week

Tuesday, July 20, 2010; 8:38pm

Today we made our way to UC Irvine. UC Irvine is one of the most fun colleges because it has an Ant Eater as its mascot. It had a nice eating area out behind the student center. It also had a nice fine arts area which was design by the architect of the Vietnam Memorial. My dad can still remember where the Starbucks was located. We also started heading towards Santa Barbara. On our way, we stopped at one of the friends of our family on our mother's side. We met them, saw there humongous garden, and then went to dinner with them. It was a long, but fun day.

College Road Trip -Days 1 & 2

From the 17th to the 23rd of July of this year, my family and I went on a road trip to see some of the colleges on the list of colleges my sister wanted to go to. The first two days were the days that we spent driving from Sacramento to San Diego.

Saturday, July 17, 2010; 8:51pm

We are in Bakersfield, California on Day 1 of my older sister's college road trip. Today we are just driving down, but we have already starting to see colleges. We saw UC Merced as we drove and gave it a quick walk-through. It is on a pretty plot of land and looks somewhat like Folsom Lake College, but with modern art and a small river around the outside of it. Unfortunately, it is in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday, July 18, 201o; 9:34pm

We are on Day 2 of the college road trip, but we saw no colleges today. After leaving Bakersfield, we went down to San Diego, but we went through the Mojave Desert, where we saw nothing but trains, windmills, and Joshua Trees. (There was seriously nothing but shrubs and a whole bunch of windmills out there in the desert. It was a very good time to just listen to music or watch a movie. My mom was the only one really interested in the desert because she loved the Joshua Trees.)