Portia and the ending

So about that end……yea, I don’t think that I got it. There must be another chapter or at least a passage that is missing from my book. …No? Really? Well, then I just hate the ending.

I found it very “soap opera”y the whole side story about how Jeremiah, the kid that Portia found brilliant in the beginning of the novel, just happens to be the son that she gave up for adoption many years ago and now she is fighting to get him into Princeton. I think that the author wanted us to root for Jeremiah and for us to want him to be accepted to Princeton because he had a brilliant mind and he was disadvantaged in life because he was adopted and his parents were not learned people. However, he was not a responsible individual; he did not do his homework or sit in for tests, and he was the person that Princeton was supposed to accept over all the other applicants? I do not think so. It is not just about being intelligent, it is important to use that intelligence for something.

What Portia did was so unethical that it blew my mind. First she “arranged” folders for the committee review in an order that was favorable to Jeremiah. Even while he was being presented to the committee, I knew right away that he was not going to be accepted. He could not compete against the other applicants. And on top of that, I was so bitter that “the odds were stacked in his favor” that I just wanted someone to take his application and throw it out the window. Then after Jeremiah was rejected, Portia had the audacity to switch his rejection with that of Jesse just because Jesse was going to Yale. The whole time that I was reading that passage I had a look of horror on my face that such an act was being committed before me.
Portia loses her job over this. I found it strange how she took being fired so nonchalantly, like she had a back-up plan or something (which she did not seem to have). She just drives away and decides to help her mother raise the new baby in Vermont. However there is no mention or how Portia is going to support herself now. She just leaves and does not take into account that she does not really have any employable skills since she can not work in any other college’s admission office. It just does not seem very realistic to me.

In the last chapter of the novel, Portia just happens to arrive at the Quest school during its high school graduation. John greets her and basically implies that they will be dating in the near future and gives the impression that he is offering her a job as a college admissions advisor at the school. That just seemed too perfect to me to be realistic in the slightest. Then Portia declines to speak with Jeremiah which I did not understand. If I was in her situation, I would have at least wanted to give the kid a hug; after all he is her long-lost son but she instead she was just content to look at him. Who is this woman??!?!?! If I had any good feelings towards initially they were all gone by the end.

In my opinion, the worst part of the novel was the ending.