On Harvard

Before I move on to new New Orleans, I've got to get my two (or three or four) bits in about Harvard. When you grow up "way out west" you learn that Harvard is supposed to be a really great place. Really smart people go there and think important things and then go on and do important things. Maybe that's true, but for me it wasn't exactally all I thought it could have been.

Don't get me wrong, there were amazing moments. The School Leadership Director, Tom, and his assistant, Deidre, were very supportive, gave me great advice, and pushed me along when I needed to be pushed. My teacher leadership seminar with Heather Peske was fantastic. Most careful feedback I have EVER received and a great group of peers. Orfield?--What do you say, Sarah? I guess I got some research skills and a fantastic reading list.

And of course the great professor Elenor Duckworth changed the way I think about everything. She really pushed us. She shared in one class about when she was a student at Harvard working on her doctorate. She felt she had to keep up "a pretense", the pretense of knowing and understanding when she wanted to be able to get frustrated and really learn. That comment changed the way I looked at my learning and my degree and even led me to quit school for a while. I don't want to take a class or have a job or do something with or for my family as part of some sort of pretense. I want to do things that I honestly think are valuable and I don’t want to send my whole life trying to make it all look easy. That takes too much needless work. I just want to be real.

That gets to the downside of Harvard:

At times it seemed to be a lot of people trying to keep up the pretense of being smart and knowing something and a lot of professors unintentionally encouraging this. One of my take-aways: Looking "together" does not mean you are learning.

Another downside:

The administration often treated me as though I was a little bit of a nuisance and like they were doing me a big favor. It was odd.

And finally, the greatest downside:

They have ALOT of money and they don’t give enough of it away so that the place can be a more diverse community where all of us can benefit from having peers with many perspectives...not simply shades of our own.