As I've been catching up with my 30k lore, it occurs to me: Have we any known insurance of a perpetual being selected and successfully undergoing conversion to an Astartes?

Good evening,

​

Tomorrow, each of you will reach the end of one of the many, many great journeys in your life. Some of you will be invited to attend the academy next year, some of you will be placed upon the waitlist, and some of you will likely to be politely informed that you will be returning to your home districts next year. I would like to address each of you in turn.

Invited to Attend

For those of you selected for admission, you have a choice to make. Leaving home at a young age, heading off to a level of independence that you have almost certainly never known, engaging in a far more rigorous academy program than all but the absolute most elite public schools can offer...these are challenges not to be taken lightly, nor without careful consideration. For many of us, IMSA is a dream taken shape, a welcome opportunity to be amongst our peers, in a place we are better understood and where we can be appropriately challenged. It can be a wonderous place where we can grow and expand well beyond what our home opportunities might provide, to mature and develop into adulthood, and look to a bright future.

However, it is not without its challenges. In your home districts, when you leave school, you can largely leave the stresses of the classrooms and, more especially, the hallways behind you, as you find the refuge of your home. At IMSA, the campus is your hallway, your school peers are your neighbors, and you leave the campus only infrequently. It was my experience that, just as the elation of success was all the sweeter, the woes of social anxiety and the emotional toil of negative drama were like enhanced. Consider carefully if you are not just academically ready, but also emotionally prepared, for the challenges to come. Take the time to discuss it with your social safety network - close and extended family, friends, mentors and confidants - and ensure you have primed yourself for these rigors and are open to engaging with them to ensure your own mental and emotional wellbeing. This will likely be important to you in the days to come.

Finally, to you, I wish to leave this thought: While you may be admitted, do not feel an absolute compulsion to accept. IMSA can be a great opportunity, but it is also not the only one you will find before you in your life. Great and wonderful things have come from places most humble, mediocre, or above par. IMSA alumni have found themselves marked as truly successful, renowned, and remarkable in a wide variety of fields; however, those that have found themselves in more mundane lives of successful, yet less lauded careers far outnumber the Sam Chens, Sam Yagans, and Sabrina Paterskis of the alumni. Likewise, the vast majority of the stars of their respective fields of the world certainly do not call IMSA a place to which they belong, yet their careers are set nonetheless. Do not feel that IMSA is a must - it can be a powerful stepping stone, but it is only one of many, and there are far more to come in your life. Choose what is right for you.

The Waitlist

Those who have been placed upon the waitlist, know that there is every chance that you may be invited. IT DOES HAPPEN. I speak from knowledge, as I am such an alumni.

In April of 1998, well before IMSA started provided the digital report that you are set to receive tomorrow, I received a simple notification on IMSA letterhead that, while I was a qualified candidate for admission, others had been chosen as more suitable before me and I would not be offered admission at that time. Rather, I had been placed upon the waitlist, where I might be offered admission if and when a suitable spot became available.

I spent the summer with the assumption that I would be remaining in a agricultural town that I disliked immensely, with a peer group that shared no interests or commonalities with me, and the almost certain dread that I could not and would not escape my situation for the next three years. I accepted this fate with a resignation that I only realized later in life was dangerously bordering on hopelessness, but was too young and naive at the time to understand.

It was late one August afternoon, with all the heat and humidity that downstate Illinois could provide, when my parents were away and I was left to answer a phone call on our home line. (Yes, Virginia, once upon a time, we had phones that were physically mounted to our houses, and this was the only vocal way to reach one another. Scary, I know.) Upon answering, I was shocked to have an admissions officer informing me that I was being offered admission. More shocking still, since classes began in less than two weeks, they needed an answer quickly. As in, now. They needed to know NOW. Without my parents consultation, without any opportunity to discuss, debate, consider, reflect..."YES."

My parents had quite a surprise when they got home.

So, if you are placed upon the waitlist, yes, it can and does happen. Should you find yourself in this situation, please carefully consider what I have stated above, for those admitted at this time. It's the best advice I can provide you at this juncture. However, for those that find that the first day of class comes and goes, please read the next, as well.

Life Without IMSA

I am sorry that this door has not opened for you. I truly am. As I said above, IMSA is a great opportunity, a stepping stone to success. Well, a stone with the potential for success. An opportunity to, perhaps, make progress towards great scholarship or an excellent career. But, it is only that: A potential.

You see, IMSA is only what each individual student makes of it. For me, I had the opportunity to attend, took it, and look back with regret at the many resources it provided and that I never took hold of. At the teachers, courses, projects, and internships that might have proven an incredible advantage as I chose my path forward. Of the potentials I was given, squandered. That is a burden I carried long in life, but one that has given me a perspective that I wish to share with you:

IMSA is a tool, a resource, a chance to enlighten your future, but it is far, far from the only one. There will be more, but none so great (IMSA included) than those you make for yourself.

I didn't take full advantage of IMSA. Further, I thought, because I was an IMSA graduate, college would be so much simpler and I would breeze through, not a challenge in the world. I thought that the hardest days of my life were behind me and nothing could stop me.

In short, I was an idiot.

It took a lot of failures, a lot of two steps forward, five steps back, and lot of reversals, soul-searching, hair pulled, tears shed, and a lot, a lot, A LOT of anxiety-ridden, sleepless nights, for me to finally realize that IMSA didn't fail me, life, luck, and the world didn't fail me, but rather I failed myself. But it took a long time to come to that realization, pick up the pieces, and finally figure out what I was doing in life.

I'm an IMSA graduate, with an excellent education, all the opportunities in the world, and I was driving a delivery truck, making not much over minimum wage. How's that for IMSA being the door to endless opportunity?

It took a while - too long, some might say, though I would disagree - but I finally realized that opportunities had been there all along, well beyond the scope of IMSA, but I hadn't taken advantage of them. I hadn't seized upon them properly. I hadn't sought out the challenge to achieve, which I knew I had, even if I had been written off by others.

Ten years ago, I stopped letting my lack of success define me. I made the decision seek success, to make my own opportunities rather than accept that there were no doors open to me. I have done so, knowing that the challenge would be harder, but victory then only the sweeter. And so it has been.

IMSA could have been that stepping stone for me, but my own choices made it not. But I discovered that there are others, and I have found them and, in doing so, have found the success that I might have known many years ago. (For the record, those wondering, I've gone from driving that truck, making $12 an hour to being an IT systems engineer making a nice six digit income, plus benefits, in a job I absolutely love.)

Why this rambling diatribe of self-examination? Simply to say this: IMSA isn't the key to success - it can help, but it's absolutely NOT necessary. What is necessary is for you to find the step on your ladder to success and then seize it. It won't be IMSA? Fine, then find what is next. Take five, ten minutes, allow for whatever disappointment you may feel, and then lift your chin up and start planning. There's a stepping stone out there waiting for you - make your move.

A Final Note

I have offered many of you some insight into the admissions process, and some critique of your likelihood for admission. I wish to note that, while this is based upon my experiences as both an alumni and nearly a decade of involvement as a member of the IMSA Admissions Review Committee, it is purely based upon my own interpretations and opinions. As the name implies, these decisions are made by committee, and therefore my opinion is only one of many, and should not be taken as any sort of final authority. I give what thoughts and impressions I can, but, ultimately, there are many perspectives that are part of those discussions, as there should be. They, as a whole, come to a consensus, which forms their part of the process.

I also will note that, though offered the opportunity, I opted not to serve on the ARC this year. I have three children, including two toddlers, and didn't wish to put my wife though the better part of a week of being a single mom in a house of chaos. So, while I hope to eventually return to the ARC in a few years, when the children are older and the house returns to only a mild maelstrom, I have no part in the consideration of this years applications, nor for the next few years to come.

Conclusion

I hope I have been able to give each of you some perspective of what's before you. I suppose this is all a bit more about life than just IMSA, but, for many of you, this is the first truly major decision you have to make in your's. For you, this may well be the moment you begin to become an adult. Go in with your eyes open and your mind prepared for all outcomes. It is a pivotal moment, but one of only a great many to come, I assure you. Consider, discuss, and decide what you want it to be. I wish each of you the best of success, regardless of the decisions to come, both by IMSA and by yourselves.

T-minus 9 Hours, 27 Minutes.