You Can't Always Get What You Want

You can't always get what you want . . . though, in  this country, you can certainly sue for it. Today, the Supreme Court of the United States had to rule on a case that never should have gone to the Supreme Court. Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin is a case of someone's spoiled unwillingness to understand that the world does not revolve around them, nor is it out to get them.

Basically, Abigail Fisher didn't have the grades or test scores to get into the university. That is the bottom line here. She didn't have the grades to get in. Think about that for a second. Even when I was in college, most people who knew what school they wanted to go to would start working towards those requirements early on. If you needed a certain ACT score and you didn't have it, you would work on computer tutorials or hire a tutor to help you. You would do what you needed to do to get the grades. It isn't like she would have been  unaware of what these requirements were. Any college will tell you basic requirements online.

So it isn't like she met the requirements in the first place. Even if she had, we live in a society where LOTS of people meet the requirements for college. LOTS of people work hard. LOTS of people try to get in. Even if you do everything right, you still may not get what you want. Then again, how many countless stories over the centuries have been written about people who didn't get the THING THEY WANTED but then move on to something even better.

This isn't even why she was suing. The University has 47 open slots for people who don't meet the requirements, but otherwise demonstrate potential to be at the college. These slots were given to people who were not Fisher. Did she have better grades than they did? Yes. However, it needs to be remembered that her grades were still not good enough to get her into the school. Other factors were considered for these slots. Her argument was that she didn't get in due to Affirmative Action and that this wasn't fair.

As I said, you can't always get what you want, but you can sue for it. You can also lose that suit. In this case, that was certainly the correct call.

For one thing, as a woman, even if she is white, Fisher is still considered in the group of people who would benefit from Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action isn't there just to help people of color. It helps any group who is under-represented, including women.

Second of all, and I think this is THE most annoying part about the suit, of the 47 slots open to students who didn't make the grades or have the test scores, 42 of them DID go to white students. Fisher wasn't suing over 47 students. She was suing over 5. She was angry because 5 people who weren't white were chosen before she was and the ONLY reason she could accept for this being the case had to do with them being chosen for the color of their skin.

She DID NOT lose her position to Affirmative Action.

Most often when it comes to slots like this, many factors have to be considered and many of those have to do with character. Now, I'm not one to harp on the content of one's character, but when it comes to things like college acceptance and getting jobs, I know it's something people look at. "How willing are you to work to achieve your goals?" "How well do you handle setbacks?" "How mature are you when you face rejection?" "What happens when you don't always get what you want?"

If the answers to these questions are basically "not much," "not well," "I throw a fit," and "I blame everything else, throw a fit, and waste everyone's time and resources so I can throw my fit at the Supreme Court" then I really don't think you meet the character requirements most colleges are looking for.

In the end, being angry about something that is just a flawed narrative in your head still won't get you what you wanted, even if you sue. All it gets you is being known as #BeckywiththeBadGrades for the rest of your life.