Extraordinary, Ordinary People by Condoleezza Rice

Author:Condoleezza Rice [Rice, Condoleezza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-71960-7
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

EARLY IN the year, I learned that I needed surgery on my hand to remove a ganglion cyst, which meant that I couldn’t study piano for several months. I quit skating altogether and gained thirty pounds due to the lack of exercise and a sudden affinity for the International House of Pancakes. This time, despite the extra pounds, when I needed a date for the sorority formal, I didn’t have to rely on my father to find one. Rich Preston, the captain of the hockey team and my first real crush, took me to the dance. The night turned out to be a little tense, though, since the hockey game in which Rich was playing went into overtime while I sat at the sorority house waiting. I was relieved when my father called to say that the game had ended and that Rich was on his way.

I also used my expanded free time to become deeply involved in student government and service activities with the sorority, resulting in my selection that spring as Denver University’s Outstanding Senior Woman. A few years before, the award had carried the politically incorrect title of Miss DU.

Throughout this period, my parents and I were developing a new kind of relationship. We still met every Saturday night for dinner followed by the hockey game. And I found it useful to drop in on them during the week, bringing my laundry with me. We also established a pattern that we kept until the end of their lives: we talked on the telephone every night.

That fall, I started to think seriously about the next chapter in my life. My parents and I were in complete agreement that at age nineteen, I was probably too young to do anything but continue in school. In any case, I had come to political science so late that I needed another year of academic training to pursue my interest in the Soviet Union.

I applied to several graduate schools to study politics and economics and was accepted everywhere except Penn State. Denver was on my list as a fallback, but I never intended to stay at the university. I wanted to go to Notre Dame, which offered a very good program in Soviet studies and encouraged a strong concentration in economics as well. We’d visited Father Hesburgh in South Bend when I was a sophomore in college and I’d loved it. My parents wanted me to stay in Denver, but if that was not possible, they said Notre Dame was a great choice. I’ve always suspected that my father, in particular, thought that Notre Dame was a protected space for his daughter in the raucous decade of the 1970s. Moreover, his friend Father Hesburgh was there and could keep an eye on me.

One afternoon in April, my father drove up in his red Ford as I came out of the sorority house on my way to class. He stopped at the corner and said, “I have something for you.” Daddy handed me the letter from Notre Dame graduate school admissions, which had come to my parents’ house.

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