Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash"Please, Mr. Marinelli, sign here". Her tone was polite, but bored. The kind of tone you’d expect from someone who repeats that same line, identically, hundreds of times a day. The woman at the University Admissions Office was an expert. Middle-aged, courteous yet detached. A quality I would, over time, recognize in many people I met along my path. I signed without reading, without thinking. An automatic gesture. Then, looking at my parents, she said, "No...
