On the weekend and perceptions...
I am still on my very long weekend. I took the day off work today since I am pretty much maxed out on days and just losing time.
The weekend was quite nice. It was a combination of getting stuff done (OH DYSON HOW I LOVE YOU!) Going to the beach for probably my last ocean swim of the season (boo!). I successfully mastered a pate a choux (yay!) and made some tasty gougeres (one set was cheddar, mimolette, and applewood bacon and the other was truffle and gruyere). I had a lovely, chill time at a bbq and laughed at a Dalek with bunny ears (don't ask!).
(**Side note, during the BBQ as I went downstairs for air and quiet, I witnessed an accident between a motorcycle and a car. I was VERY glad to see the person walk away mostly unscathed, but wow, that was scary!)
The next day I got to play tennis and my arm held up MUCH better than expected. It was perfect tennis weather yesterday with some sunshine, cool temperatures, and almost NO wind. In the evening I went out since I had the next day, today, off. The night and music were largely uninspiring so I went out and started watching the US Open match on the television.
I ended up getting into a conversation with a nice and funny person I had only met a couple of times before. We spanned many a topic (having been at the same BBQ the day before)and landed on our respective college experiences. His were at MIT, mine were at Harvard.
It is always interesting getting a similarly aged person's experience about the big bad red H. In his case, he had taken a couple of classes there. In comparison to MIT, it seemed a heck of a lot more well groomed, richer, just different. I had similar perceptions of MIT as a student except it was "less well groomed, too hyper-focused, mad scientist wacky". I always thought of both places as academic pressure cookers, but with MIT being a little more forgiving than Harvard ever was. There seemed to be a lot more flexibility there.
Now, this was all well and good until someone else decided to join the conversation. Apparently this person had attended Northwestern and viewed it with some sort of hipster annoyance or something. HIS perception is that MIT is where the SMART kids went and Harvard is where the very rich kids went. It was as if somehow, everyone at Harvard was a legacy kid in his eyes. I was amused by this and asked to please fill me in on the Harvard experience (he had no idea I had gone there). So once he figured it out, he looked kind of annoyed and thankfully walked away.
Ok. So, Mr. I think I am so clever because I am wearing Elvis Costello glasses and have asymmetrical greasy hair (wait dude, you are my age...too friggen old for that hipster I am a robot bs)", here is the deal. I am no legacy. I cannot be farther from being a legacy kid if I were a cactus. I grew up really poor. Do you know what that means? Here, I will clue you in.
It means living in overly cramped quarters with your entire family. It means a cold, broken down apartment. It means hiding from the gas man so that he couldn't come in and shut off the heat in the middle of winter because you chose to eat rather than paying your gas bill. It means getting stuff at the Salvation Army not to be fashionable or retro, but because you have to. It means eating rice and ketchup for dinner because there was nothing else. It means the shame of food stamps. It means praying you got waivers to pay for your AP exams because you were too poor to afford each at $65/pop. It means working your ass off and earning your place in that all legacy kid school. It means being consistently FLOORED at how wealthy your classmates in college are. It means being accused of being a "quota". It means working 2 or 3 jobs to try to pay for books and basics. It means sweating it out at the registrar's office before every semester HOPING you would get cleared for registration. It also means that sometimes, even with all of that hard work, it wasn't enough.
So, yes...MIT is for smart kids. Harvard is for smart kids too. In fact, ALL higher ed institutions have them. They all have rich kids too, Mr. Hipster. It would benefit you greatly to spend more time thinking and realizing that yes, you don't know it all. :P
The weekend was quite nice. It was a combination of getting stuff done (OH DYSON HOW I LOVE YOU!) Going to the beach for probably my last ocean swim of the season (boo!). I successfully mastered a pate a choux (yay!) and made some tasty gougeres (one set was cheddar, mimolette, and applewood bacon and the other was truffle and gruyere). I had a lovely, chill time at a bbq and laughed at a Dalek with bunny ears (don't ask!).
(**Side note, during the BBQ as I went downstairs for air and quiet, I witnessed an accident between a motorcycle and a car. I was VERY glad to see the person walk away mostly unscathed, but wow, that was scary!)
The next day I got to play tennis and my arm held up MUCH better than expected. It was perfect tennis weather yesterday with some sunshine, cool temperatures, and almost NO wind. In the evening I went out since I had the next day, today, off. The night and music were largely uninspiring so I went out and started watching the US Open match on the television.
I ended up getting into a conversation with a nice and funny person I had only met a couple of times before. We spanned many a topic (having been at the same BBQ the day before)and landed on our respective college experiences. His were at MIT, mine were at Harvard.
It is always interesting getting a similarly aged person's experience about the big bad red H. In his case, he had taken a couple of classes there. In comparison to MIT, it seemed a heck of a lot more well groomed, richer, just different. I had similar perceptions of MIT as a student except it was "less well groomed, too hyper-focused, mad scientist wacky". I always thought of both places as academic pressure cookers, but with MIT being a little more forgiving than Harvard ever was. There seemed to be a lot more flexibility there.
Now, this was all well and good until someone else decided to join the conversation. Apparently this person had attended Northwestern and viewed it with some sort of hipster annoyance or something. HIS perception is that MIT is where the SMART kids went and Harvard is where the very rich kids went. It was as if somehow, everyone at Harvard was a legacy kid in his eyes. I was amused by this and asked to please fill me in on the Harvard experience (he had no idea I had gone there). So once he figured it out, he looked kind of annoyed and thankfully walked away.
Ok. So, Mr. I think I am so clever because I am wearing Elvis Costello glasses and have asymmetrical greasy hair (wait dude, you are my age...too friggen old for that hipster I am a robot bs)", here is the deal. I am no legacy. I cannot be farther from being a legacy kid if I were a cactus. I grew up really poor. Do you know what that means? Here, I will clue you in.
It means living in overly cramped quarters with your entire family. It means a cold, broken down apartment. It means hiding from the gas man so that he couldn't come in and shut off the heat in the middle of winter because you chose to eat rather than paying your gas bill. It means getting stuff at the Salvation Army not to be fashionable or retro, but because you have to. It means eating rice and ketchup for dinner because there was nothing else. It means the shame of food stamps. It means praying you got waivers to pay for your AP exams because you were too poor to afford each at $65/pop. It means working your ass off and earning your place in that all legacy kid school. It means being consistently FLOORED at how wealthy your classmates in college are. It means being accused of being a "quota". It means working 2 or 3 jobs to try to pay for books and basics. It means sweating it out at the registrar's office before every semester HOPING you would get cleared for registration. It also means that sometimes, even with all of that hard work, it wasn't enough.
So, yes...MIT is for smart kids. Harvard is for smart kids too. In fact, ALL higher ed institutions have them. They all have rich kids too, Mr. Hipster. It would benefit you greatly to spend more time thinking and realizing that yes, you don't know it all. :P