We can’t urge you too strongly to keep in mind what “they say” as you move through the rest of your text.

he summary in the first paragraph succeeds because it points in two directions at once—both toward Zinczenko's own text and toward the second paragraph, where the writer begins to establish her own argument. The opening sentence gives a sense of Zinczenko's general argument (that the fast-food chains are to blame for obesity), including his two main supporting claims (about warning labels and parents), but it ends with an empha- sis on the writer's main concern: parental responsibility. In this way, the summary does justice to Zinczenko's arguments while also setting up the ensuing critique.

think it's some special brand of American pathological optimism that so many of us believe the story of Melanie has to turn out to be happy. And that if it doesn't, something unusual has happened-- and not just this is what happens all the time, that the supermarket might be full of Melanies.

You're going to make something of yourself. What there is are customers in an upscale supermarket with red banners out front announcing luxury apartments upstairs.

They were dropped into a foreign land and asked to mentally imagine themselves as belonging.That's hard to do. In fact, the entire project of Raquel's life has been trying to convince herself she does belong. In this regard, she is a mental gladiator. Because this project did not end when she got into the prestigious college. It did not end when she graduated from that college or when, after college, she landed an excellent job interview at a law firm to be a paralegal.

Raquel is now more than twice as likely as Jonathan to make it into the middle class-- statistically more likely to be employed, to be healthy, to enjoy her daily work, to have a happy marriage. But most poor kids who make it to college do not make it to graduation. In fact, the number is shockingly low. Less than one fifth finish in six years.

getting outside of his room-- or his head.

In the beginning, I struggled too. My first year, I got C-pluses and B-minuses.

still didn't feel like I was worthy. And when I got to college, it showed.

My main thing was, who am I to be accepted into a college?

We had a lot of arguments about his mom, but he knows now. He saw himself through her eyes in a lot of ways. She made him feel very low at times. So I tried to love him and show him the support.

These kids are free. This is what freedom looks like

I didn't really-- for myself, I didn't really see college. For myself, I saw just not being a homeless guy.

he year after Melanie graduated, a handsome, young, black University Heights senior named Jonathan Gonzales won the Posse scholarship.

It was just like, I want this shit over and done with because I felt like it wasn't going to change.

For the last decade of her life, she's been working at the supermarket, taking local college courses part-time, stopping every few semesters when she needs money or sleep, and thinking about where she went wrong. She didn't apply to any other private colleges after Middlebury turned her down. She did not reach out to Lisa, or Pablo, or Ashleigh, or Angela. She graduated early and checked out of high school. And she's furious at herself for doing that.

You know, Pablo wanted me to apply for Harvard. I was like, be fucking realistic. I'm never going to get accepted to Harvard. This is a school that doesn't even have fucking statistics offered, you know, like AP classes. Versus a kid like Fieldston-- you walk out in four years, you're prepared to go to a school like that.

I mean, maybe I would have been better off not going through that experience. Once that happened, I just wrote it off out of my life.

I think the first day, I wore high heels and a skirt. Maybe I wore a tie with a shirt, a dress-up shirt. I always went very professional when I went there, like what is considered office apparel.

he could see that this division we're all so inured to was not a reflection of her inferior worth or ability. She just didn't know what to do with the idea that she might be alone in seeing that.

It seemed that the people around her must believe that this was the natural order of things

know I looked at it and I said, well, I know that we're only being taught to flip burgers in Burger King or McDonald's or to hold doors for students like them that will probably live in those buildings on Madison Avenue. And we'll be wearing the uniform servicing these people.

the

I felt like a ratchet ass girl from the hood. I felt like I didn't belong there. I just felt like I have no business in this building. I don't remember them. They were just like a sea of white, blond, blue-green eyes. I couldn't possibly bring myself into my body to actually engage with these kids. I didn't want to engage with them.

t's like the second level to math A, I would say prior to taking trigonometry or even statistics or something like that. They don't offer any AP classes. Another thing that was really tormenting to me was that we didn't have a library. And I love books. This is like, wow, we're really in a poor part of the Bronx where we're not being considered

Well, I remember going in. And I was just like, what is this? You know? Like, this has got to be a joke.

She's also wearing pink sweatpants and a hoodie. Her hair is actually under a hat, so all I can see are some green bangs peeking out. The "they" she's talking about, that's you listening right now. Melanie has considered you a lot-- who you are, how you'll hear her.

He told me she'd call when she got off work. He didn't want to tell me anything more. But he did tell me Melanie worked at a supermarket on Sixth Avenue. It happens to be around the corner from my office. It took three days for Melanie to call me. And when she did, she carefully said, I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm ready to talk.

I called Middlebury to see if maybe Melanie did attend. They said, no. Did she get in? They said, we have no record showing that she received an offer of admission. I didn't know if that meant she wasn't admitted, or they just had no record either way, but that's all they would say.

Pablo said Melanie is one of those kids you remember because she was very, very, very smart-- three verys-- and full of potential. She stood out to him for other reasons too.

They're nothing like us, nothing at all.

And I remember her making connections between the painting and Enlightenment era philosophers, and quoting John Locke, and just schooling all of us-- you know, making connections that I would have been completely incapable of making, and just clearly the smartest person in the room.

The idea is if you want a kid to move from one social class to another, that kid has to see what it looks like over there on the other side. Exposure is a tool for social change and economic mobility. Or it just sucks.

But what do you do in the moment when you're still a high school student, and you don't have the power-- like I don't have a degree. I couldn't become a politician in that moment and change-- I don't know. Making change just takes a long time.

Basically, whatever gap you hear about-- income gap, achievement gap, racial divide-- these two groups of kids from University Heights and Fieldston exist on opposite sides. And just seeing across that divide, something so many of us never do, can be incredibly powerful.