Where are they now? An update on Marilee Jones

Every once in a while, I ask myself, whatever happened with that person/place/thing/situation that I blogged about back in the day.

What about those kids at Hanover, NH high school who cheated?  What about the rift that formed among the full-bearded Santas? How about the guy who tried to buy the co-op down the street from where I live, but claims he was blackballed because he was Irish Catholic and the building was full of snotty WASPs. (That was one of my original posts, over three years ago now.  I don't know what happened to John Walsh, the protagonist in my post, but I will note that I walk by the building he was trying to get into every day. The unit he was after was on the first floor, street level with no frontage separating the building from the street. The unit, as far as I can tell, remains unoccupied.)

Sure, there are some recurring characters in my blogs - Bernie and Ruthie Madoff  had an evergreen run for a while - but mostly, once something's in the rear-view mirror, I don't look back.

But when the update presents itself to me, well.... Clearly I need to jump on it. Especially when I am in desperate need of a blog post, am grasping for ideas - do I have time to read Super Freakonomics tonight? - and I'm really, really tired. Plus my nose is really, really cold.

Thus, I read with interest an article in today's NY Times, conveniently available yesterday when I was on the hunt for a blog topic, on Marilee Jones, the MIT dean of admissions who was caught up in a scandal a couple of years ago because of a few more-than-little-white-lies on her CV.

I just re-read my blog post on Marilee, and I must say it's an essay that stands the test of time. (And I'm not just saying that because I'm really, really tired. And my nose is really, really cold.)  See for yourself.

Anyway, Ms. Jones has resurfaced, and is doing something that she is highly qualified to do: set up a consulting business, working with admissions offices and parents.

“I dropped off the grid, on purpose,” she said in a recent interview. “I needed time to reground and heal.”

She's also gone full mid-life: she's moved to NYC and gotten a divorce.

Good luck, Marilee, in your new venture. What you did to cause your fall from grace was human, forgivable, and pretty much did no harm (other to you and your family - which is not nothing, but nonetheless....)

As une femme d'un certain age I wish her all the best, and note with interest that she's not looking for full time work.

“I don’t want to work that hard,” she said. “And at this point in my life, I’m not interested in institutions that don’t really move me.”

I can certainly identify with her feelings here, but I'm guessing that she'll be working plenty hard with those NYC parents who are willing to fork over $500 to pick her brain about getting their little darlings into an Ivy.