Reply to I find it annoying when people get on here and say it really doesn't matter where your kid goes

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As I said to my daughter this morning, the thing about Harvard is it's full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. Do any of you think a cocktail party full of high-achievers is a fun place to be? Because I have been to many and I would like to point out it is not.

A focus on zero-sum competition and rank, agonizing over the difference between a 1540 Sat and an 1580... Packing a "well-rounded" resume with a focus on creating a polished 18 year old product... Everything about that process creates deeply confirmist little worker bees. Who are also boring. Learning, real academic learning, the pursuit of real knowledge, is about research and debate. It's not competitive, and it is its own reward.

I'm still not sure where the college that caters to those kind of students is, and I'm not sure my daughter is one of those students. But I'd like to find it. [/quote]`

Harvard isn't full of people who freak out who have been competing for so long that's all they know. To assume that no Harvard student values real academic learning is a bizarre rationalization.[/quote]

+1 Indeed, most are genuinely interested in some field or fields. But....many are also hypercompetitive. Which is good in some ways, and definitely not good in others.[/quote]

What am I rationalizing, strangely defensive person?

Not going to Harvard?

I also did not say that every student who went to Harvard didn't value academic learning. What a bizarre interpretation of the text. However, if there's one thing reading YA fiction written by ivy league graduates has taught me, for some, everything, literally everything, is a selection game where your oppressed protagonist is both the cleverest person in the room and also the one everyone is jealous of for their specialness.

Of course, novels like The Magicians are not in and of themselves representative of an entire population. And yet.

[/quote]

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