Azia Kim, an 18-year-old graduate of Troy High School in Fullerton and the suddenly infamous Stanford student imposter, is living proof of a
crucial truth: If you work at it hard enough,
reality can become anything you want it to be.
In other words, Azia Kim is a genius. She managed, for eight months, to trick everyone that knew her at Stanford into believing she was a sophomore there, majoring in human biology, when the reality was she technically didn't even exist at Stanford. She didn't exist at Santa Clara University either, but they let her join ROTC there anyway. That, to me and to other bloggers out there, is a display of more creativity and ingenuity than most people who actually get into high-caliber colleges these days ever muster in their entire careers. Doesn't she deserve to be at Stanford now? Isn't there some secret "Pass Go" rule written somewhere, where if you prove your worth in some extraordinary way after the initial rejection, the rejection could be rescinded?
Alright, maybe that's stretching it. There are questions of security and common decency that arise from Kim's masterful ruse. (Nevermind the fact that it unraveled after only a year; couldn't she at least have stuck around till Stanford got a chance to a feasibly win a Big Game again?). But you might say Stanford's been asking for this for a while. Days after Kim was revealed to be an imposter, another poseur emerged, Elizabeth Okazaki, who reportedly lived in a physics lab at Stanford for at least three years.
* Photo on top from the Unofficial Stanford Blog. Above, from The Stanford Daily, which broke the story first and has had the most comprehensive coverage.
