Each chapter of Irena Smith’s memoir, “The Golden Ticket,” opens with a college application essay prompt attributed to a prestigious university.

It is a marvelous and intriguing device. It allows Irena to integrate her experiences as a highly sought-after consultant for college-aspiring high school students and their parents into the broader, relatable themes of cultural assimilation, coming of age, personal aspirations, and parenthood that she wrestles with her entire life. Armed with prodigious skills (Irena holds a PhD in Comparative Literature), she teases a spectrum of emotions from the reader.

I laughed out loud at her recounting of one father, a professional writer, who jots down a comment on his daughter’s essay stating that it lacks a certain “je ne sais quoi.”

Then a few pages later I am fighting back tears reading of how Irena coaxed a winning essay out of a student, seeking a second shot at academia, through his epiphany gained from an encounter with a clogged toilet.

All the while I am in despair as she and her husband, David, struggle with monumental and tragic familial issues. David, a pharmacological psychiatrist, is professionally restricted from treating his own, neuro-atypical, children. Irena marvels that she is astoundingly good at helping students get admitted to prestigious colleges yet such prospects are out of reach for her daughter and two sons. She finds herself stifling the urge to let loose on her “batshit crazy” clients and their myopia.

Parenting is universally difficult. Even the batshit crazy parents are well-meaning. Good intentions, however, only go so far. For me, it calls to mind another potential prompt:

“What if your greatest skills, the ones you spent a lifetime developing, were of little use in realizing your most heartfelt desires for your family? What then?” – Institute for Ironically Gifted Parents

In the best memoirs, and this is surely one of them, authors share intimate details of their lives thus giving readers cause to question their own journeys. Bravo to Irena Smith for this substantial dose of perspective. ( )