In the background of an essay like "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League" — and of essays like "No Time to Think" or "The 'Busy' Trap," both published in the Times — is the looming presence of the arrhythmic, unreassuring modern world, which seems always to be speeding things up in a senseless way.
As William Deresiewicz dramatically puts it in his recent New Republic essay, "Don't Send Your Kids to the Ivy League," "Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose".
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To gain entry, Anna first had to send an erotic essay and a photo of herself to One Leg Up's founder, a husky-voiced, 33-year-old proselytizer for sexual experimentation who goes by the name Palagia.
