Eye on the Goal

"In high school, I never got A's on one paper in English. Here, I get A's in every paper I turn in," he says.

Bill walks into a windowless, cinder-block classroom on the college's main campus in Annandale for his English course. While half the class is joking around about Ramen noodles and blowing up marshmallow Peeps in the microwave, Bill opens his copy of The Sun Also Rises, yawns and starts moving his jacket zipper up and down. He shrugs at Hemingway, saying there's not enough action to keep him engaged for long.

"Did anyone notice the name-dropping in this book?" asks the teacher, Ismail Saeed. "As in, 'Oh Mencken's a drunk. I went to school with Bishop Manning.' They're talking about literary characters as if they're friends."

No one responds.

"Anyone enjoy the bullfighting?" Saeed asks, pleadingly.

After class is over and Bill finishes another in calculus -- a course he considers on par with his high school Algebra II -- he texts his friend about going to see a Washington Capitals hockey game the next night. He begins contemplating life at West Point and concedes ambivalence.

"I'm not sure about West Point. I'm trying not to think about it. My mind always gets confused," he says. He tries to convince himself that the Iraq war will likely be over by the time he would graduate.

In January, Bill gets a phone call from West Point. Finally, he hears a verdict based on his performance in Minnesota. But the call does not go his way: The school wants Bill to play in the junior leagues for one more year -- in a better league, too -- and enroll as a 20-year-old freshman. He's told to withdraw his application and reapply. If he chooses to do that, he'll either have to persuade U-Va. to hold his spot for another year until he gets a new answer from West Point, or risk losing it.

He had planned on only one gap year -- one year off the track. Now he has to rethink his plan, he says.

"I am seriously thinking about going to U-Va. That's becoming more of an option," he says. "I don't want to sit out another year . . . All my friends are in college. They'd be juniors when I was a freshman."

A few days later, Bill is driving in his truck to meet a former hockey teammate, Shayne Pouliot, a freshman at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, who is in town for winter break. It's late morning, and Bill calls Shayne to see if he's running on time for their early lunch at the Buffalo Wing Factory & Pub in Ashburn. (It's 49-cent wing day, so Bill is eager.)

"Hello? Shayne, what's up? All right! I'll buy you Buffalo wings," Bill says, extending the free lunch after realizing he woke Shayne up. Bill ends the call and notes in disbelief that his friend is just waking up at 11:30 a.m. Even at college, Shayne's earliest classes are at 10 a.m., Bill says.