Word: dud
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What, exactly, is a dud? Well, it’s difficult to define with a great deal of precision, but for simplicity’s sake let’s call a Harvard dud a student in the College who is not performing—academically, athletically, artistically, extracurricularly—anywhere near the level that the admissions office envisioned when the positive admissions decision was made...
...might find a dud sitting next to you in Linguistics 80, “Dialects of English,” having just decided to quit her athletics team to allow herself more time to pursue other activities—like drinking at the Owl. You might find a dud, admitted to Harvard because he is an idiot savant of mathematics, who has decided to drop math and take up writing terrible poetry. Or you might find a dud who just wasn’t especially talented to begin with, but somehow looked good “on paper...
Incidentally, I’m not overly worried that my discussion of duds is going to personally offend anyone. The egos at Harvard are so big that even the most degenerate of duds will not self-identify as such. Quite the contrary, in fact. I’ve always been bemused that it seems to be the duds, more than anyone else, who tend to talk about how everyone at Harvard is so amazing (presumably, including them). By this account, I myself could very well be a dud; if that were the case, I—like the rest...
...that everyone defines success in his or her own way, and blah blah blah. That’s rubbish. Yes, there are many different kinds of achievement—some that can be measured by one’s accomplishments, and some that cannot. A dud is a Harvard student that is faltering in the former category—and there are plenty roaming around Cambridge...
...Japanese mobile operator DoCoMo's wireless Internet service, i-mode. DoCoMo dazzled at first, but average usage and revenue per subscriber are falling in Japan, as in Europe. The U.S. can barely deliver reliable voice service, much less wireless Internet, which would seem destined to be another techno-dud service...