Ping-pong

Important things happen in rooms with brown-paneled walls. If I hadn’t already known this was true before this past weekend, I know it now. The room at the St. Regis Hotel in which my interview for the Rhodes Scholarship took place not only had brown panels, but was even windowless and darkly lit. The room was the perfect place for an interrogation, which is exactly what happened. For 20 minutes I tried to tell a panel of eight extremely accomplished people—including, perhaps most notably, Nicholas Kristof—why Burma matters, but in the end the scholarship went elsewhere. A scattering of traumatic memories remain, but so too do dim outlines of lessons learned.