My childhood hero was Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, aka that guy from Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, who spent two years tromping about the American West before succumbing to starvation during a walkabout in the Alaskan wilderness. I thought McCandless was ridiculously brave to go on such an adventure, and concluded that he probably made the right choice in going gallivanting for two years. After all, he got to be what my young self thought of as really alive. Indeed, Into the Wild still holds a soft spot in my heart, right beside Excellent Sheep, by William Deresiewicz, and now The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. Like Into the Wild, Catcher tells the story of a cynical young man (Holden Caulfield) who becomes alienated from an otherwise privileged life and commits a series of arguably emancipatory actions during his adolescence; which, of course, could be viewed as either destructive or transformative. So what is it about these characters — McCandless, Deresiewicz’s sheep, and Holden — that attract young readers like myself today? I’d like to suggest that Excellent Sheep is the key to deciphering this dilemma. Its message is simple: anxious parents and ever-intensifying academic institutions have created a “system [that] manufactures students who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose” (pg. 3).  The upshot: that McCandless, Caulfield, and countless Grinnellian sheep bleating STEM, STEM, STEM are plagued by a paucity of existential authenticity; or, as Holden says, we’re phonies. Ironically, our narrator, Holden, never seriously entertains ideas becoming a writer. For instance, in Chapter 22, his sister asks him to name “something you’d like to be,” (223), but, of course, the pair only consider instrumental professions — scientist and lawyer. They simply cannot bring themselves to think of an alternative. In short, Catcher proves the durability of ideas across space and time. In 1951, when Catcher was first published, the “excellent sheep” were boarding school kids at elite prep schools — like Holden or me. However, with the proliferation of AP classes and IB programs, the “excellent sheep” are no longer matriculating exclusively in elite schools, but often can be found in standardized working-class schools as well. Excellent Sheep is littered with references about the death of the liberal arts, and students pursuing careers instead of passions. (Economics is the most popular major at Harvard.) Then again, am I as a prep-school graduate, Grinnellian, and member of one of the fetishized STEM majors one to criticize? Probably not. However, last spring, as I watched my peers scrambling to nab the prestigious research internships they rarely enjoy, I found myself going a different way — returning home to Oregon to work my beloved job of the last seven years as a horse trainer. Nonetheless, I have now had nearly twenty-two years of being a near-excellent sheep. Though I lack the traditional helicopter parents, I was a member of a family that had achieved academic excellence. My parents might never have peeked at my high-school grades; however. there was implicit parental pressure that I would eventually compete for a spot at an elite college. Just like Christopher McCandless, Deresiewicz’s sheep, and Holden Caulfield, my childhood was constrained by parental expectations.However, Holden’s implicit existential question remains: Am I willing to become my authentic self?