I just saw a rousing 25th anniversary production of Les Miz at the Kennedy Center. Rather predictably (this was my fourth viewing) but with no less genuine emotion, my eyes welled up when petit Gavroche sang the anthem, “Little People” as he lay dying on the barricade:

“be careful as you go
cos little people grow
and little people know
when little people fight,
we may look easy pickings
but we got some bite!
so never kick a dog
because it’s just a pup
you’d better run for cover when the pup grows up”

For those of you who’ve spent the last twenty-five years in a cave, Les Misérables is the blockbuster musical based on Victor Hugo’s book of the same name. Gavroche is a street urchin, mascot to the Parisian student revolutionaries and their canary in the mine. He volunteers to scope out the army below and (spoiler alert) gets shot for his efforts.

I thought about Gavroche’s song as I read an essay in the Sunday Times about “Super People.” The author addresses a topic that never fails to make my blood boil, no matter how many times I read or write about it—the pressures kids face in high school to outdo themselves and their peers with mega resumes highlighting their creative talent, altruism, entrepreneurial spirit, and athletic prowess. That’s what it takes these days to stand out from the crowd of equally amazing super achievers. College admissions officials call this being “pointy” as opposed to well rounded (although it seems to me these superstars are pretty well rounded too, a bit like the Appalachians with Mount Washington thrown in for good measure.)

It’s no longer good enough to be good enough. I see a lot of students in my practice who feel bad because they can’t measure up.  Many of them are graduates of International Baccalaureate high schools who’ve earned scholarships to university honors programs. Yet they feel like imposters because they haven’t started a foundation for Tibetan orphans or won the Intel Science Competition for a breakthrough in cancer research. The culture of Super Persondom is doing them in.

Now back to Gavroche. Let’s suspend disbelief for a minute and imagine the 19th century Gavroche transported to the 21st century. Say Jean Valjean had carried him to La Sâlpetrière instead of leaving him to die with the rebels. He survives his wounds and, a few years later, decides to parlay his adventures on the barricade into a college application essay:

When I was only twelve, I spearheaded an insurrection of university students. I was shot and lived through a near-death experience. All my friends died. I never went to school but my street education is worth much more than book learning.

And then he wraps it all up with the chorus:

So listen here, professor with your head in the cloud
It’s often kinda useful to get lost in a crowd
So keep your universities — i don’t give a damn
For better or for worse it is the way that i am

I can just picture the excitement in the admissions offices of the Ivy League. Foreign! (According to the Times article, many colleges have recruiters in other countries to promote globalization.) Uneducated but smart! Confident enough to thumb his nose at the establishment!

Voilà.  Gavroche’s pointiness wins him a full ride to Harvard: Little Person to Super Person with just a stroke of the quill pen.