The Lottery

Applying for high schools in DC is a stressful experience. It involves essays, tests, auditions, recommendations and interviews – and that's just for the public schools. But as the alternative is home-schooling (and having now had a taste of that, we were correct in our assumption that that is a non-starter) we sucked it up and began the arduous process of visiting and applying for high school this fall.

Before the process even began, we decided that, having left the Catholic church, we weren't keen on Owen attending a parochial school (to be honest, the Cavanaugh hearing didn't help either). Most of the other private schools in DC were generally excluded based on costs since at $46k or more per year, we weren't going to be able to send Owen to college if he even managed to get into Sidwell Friends. Owen let us know that our neighborhood high school was not for him (Owen doesn't like conflict and while Eastern has lots of good qualities, it also has a lot of student drama and not in the theatrical sense), which left us with nine selective public high schools and a couple of charters to chose from.

Owen informed us early on that his first choice was Duke Ellington, DC's Performing High School, and we got it – Duke was renovated a few years ago at cost of $180 million, it's beautiful and has music labs, practice rooms, dance studios, costume shops, printmaking and a performance hall. But Duke is hard core: in the instrumental program you have rehearsals and music instruction daily from 2 pm to 5 pm; you're expected to practice 3 hours a day; and there are regular juries, evaluations and recitals. Plus it's an hour from our house via public transportation.

Owen seemed to think that he could get in just on charm. We disagreed, and so after the holidays instituted a high school application bootcamp for him. Serious, hour long practice sessions daily. No devices until he got his grades back up. Review of algebra (for the Walls test, which didn't go well...). And lessons in essay writing.

Owen's audition for Duke was scheduled for Allen's birthday. He was extremely prepared (and a little anxious given his judge was Ms. Purdie, his sectional coach from DCYOP for the past five years) but under the advice of his teacher played his main piece at 80 percent in case he got nervous. He didn't get nervous, so Ms. Purdie commented, "Huh, that was kind of slow." A week later, we found out he passed and got to move to the next stage: an assessment exam and presentation. After that, we had the family interview and musical theory test (Owen did great on the test – who knew he was fluent in melodic vs harmonic minor scales and diminished chords – though he couldn't recognize the score of "Happy Birthday;" we could have done better on the interview).

The application process finished up right as the Pandemic was heating up (Owen had his last interview for another school on the Wednesday before they closed the DC school system for 6 weeks). We had ranked his schools and submitted his Lottery application and then waited until today, when at 7 something in the morning, we got the news that Owen was in.

We're still a little anxious (partially because who knows if school will be in session this fall) about Owen having an hour long commute each way to school (Duke is in a remote part of Georgetown) and having to practice so much (they want him to bring his cello with him on vacation), but he is really excited about next year. And honestly it was pretty nice to have something to celebrate!