The Envelope, Please

thinking about success in the aftermath of Oscar season

Did you watch the Oscars on Sunday? You’d be in good company if you did, since millions of people around the world tune into the award ceremony every year. I am not one of them, but I consider myself Oscar-adjacent in that I regularly drink coffee and eat croissants with my friend Tracy, who conscientiously watches ALL the best picture nominees and the actual award ceremony, after which we discuss the winners and the contenders and the clothes and the hot gossip. My contribution to the discussion is occasionally watching the trailers (and sometimes an actual best picture nominee, usually by accident) and, the morning after the Oscars, scanning the internet so I can see whose dress was most like a water feature and whose skirt was the most voluminous and who looked like a stick of butter.

What does any of this have to do with college applications and raising young adults, the ostensible subject of this Substack, you ask? Plenty. Winning an Oscar is widely considered the apogee of profes…