University of Denver
Forever...The University of Denver is one of the colleges Katherine Danziger considers, applies to, and ultimately accepts. The novel presents it less through details of campus or academic life than through the choices clustered around it: Katherine’s uncertainty about where to study, her wish to remain near Michael Wagner, and her parents’ worry that choosing a distant school will shape her future. Denver therefore becomes a concrete destination at the point when a high-school relationship and the prospect of independent adult lives begin to pull in different directions.
Place in Katherine’s College Plans
Katherine’s first discussion of college makes Denver one possibility among several. She is waiting to learn where she will be accepted and names Michigan, State, and Denver as schools she has in view. Michael, by contrast, hopes to attend the University of Vermont or Middlebury College. As they walk around a lake holding hands, their college hopes appear side by side, but they do not yet amount to a shared plan: each is imagining a future that may lead elsewhere.
The University of Denver becomes more consequential when Katherine’s parents raise the question of what will happen after high school. Her father thinks she might be happier not to be tied to one boy; Katherine answers that she is not unhappy, but misses Michael. Her mother points out that the next year will put them apart. The question sends Katherine to her guidance counselor, where she admits that she wants the University of Vermont or Middlebury College because she and a friend want to be together. Denver thus belongs to a set of applications that Katherine initially treats as open options, even as her relationship starts to influence how she evaluates them.
Application and Acceptance
When Katherine meets with the counselor, the application process is already advanced. The counselor reviews her folder and notes applications to Michigan, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Denver. Katherine again says that she would rather attend the University of Vermont or Middlebury College, making clear that her preferred destinations have changed from the schools already on her application list. The exchange gives Denver a specific place in her choices: it is not merely a college mentioned in passing, but one of the institutions to which she has formally applied.
The admissions results narrow those possibilities. Katherine is rejected by Michigan and accepted by Pennsylvania State University and the University of Denver. Michael is accepted by the University of Vermont but not Middlebury College. Their results leave them with different destinations, and Denver is the one Katherine can choose without waiting for a new application outcome. The novel records her acceptance as part of a larger sequence of decisions, rather than describing the university’s admissions standards or the grounds on which it admits her.
A Plan for Distance
Before the decisions arrive, Katherine and Michael imagine a way to make college separation less complete. Because the University of Vermont and Middlebury College operate on a trimester system, Michael plans to take the winter semester off, teach skiing in Colorado, and make up the credits in summer school. He expects this arrangement to let him graduate in four years while spending every winter weekend with Katherine. He has already written to Vail, Aspen, and Steamboat Springs about ski work. In this plan, Colorado is not just a distant region; it is the proposed bridge between their separate college paths.
The plan remains conditional on their admissions and choices. Michael’s acceptance at the University of Vermont supplies a possible basis for it, while Katherine’s acceptance at Denver gives her a different school to consider. She asks Michael whether he thinks she will be admitted to Denver, and he reassures her that she will be. Their conversation makes his confidence part of her anticipation, but it does not establish that the winter arrangement will happen or that Katherine will attend Denver. The plan is a hoped-for solution to distance, not a settled account of their college lives.
Katherine’s Decision
After receiving her results, Katherine writes to the University of Denver immediately to accept its offer. Her parents think she should wait a few weeks and consider the decision, particularly because Denver is far away. Katherine does not follow their advice to delay. She explains Michael’s plan to them, but they are not pleased by it. The contrast is central: Katherine acts decisively, while her parents see the distance and the relationship-based rationale as reasons for caution.
The acceptance is therefore a concrete decision, but the available account does not confirm that Katherine eventually enrolls or describes her experience as a student there. It establishes that she accepts Denver’s offer while her relationship with Michael remains a major factor in how she imagines the future. That distinction matters: an acceptance is not yet the life it seems to promise, and the novel keeps the practical outcome open as graduation and summer bring further changes.
Narrative Significance
The University of Denver marks a threshold between Katherine’s school life and an anticipated adulthood in which she and Michael may no longer share the same daily world. Graduation is described as the end of one life and the beginning of another; in that transition, choosing a college becomes more than a question of admission. Katherine’s parents’ concern about distance, her turn toward the University of Vermont or Middlebury College, and her eventual acceptance of Denver show how love enters a decision usually framed as individual planning.
The later course of the relationship places a limit on the couple’s winter-weekend plan. Katherine’s summer includes a reunion with Michael at camp and, eventually, their separation; by the end, she reflects that she is not ready for forever. This does not erase the earlier acceptance or prove that Denver caused the breakup. Rather, the contrast between their confident plan to stay together and the relationship’s eventual change makes the university choice part of the novel’s larger passage from romantic expectation toward uncertain futures. Denver matters in the story chiefly as a chosen destination whose meaning is bound up with both Katherine’s independence and her hope of remaining connected to Michael.
