Word: harvardness
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...minutes preceding my last exam at Harvard though, I began to imagine...
...hand.” I look around me to see others waving their burning tests like Fourth of July sparklers and struggling to save themselves with only one free hand. Somehow, we all make it out alive, and Gawker has a field day with it. Under media scrutiny, Harvard finally has no excuse but to build a real student union atop the ashes of the Science Center...
...many ways, this pseudo-amputee circus has come to be a symbol for everything I see as awful (and admirable) about Harvard. No matter what time of day or setting, Harvard encourages a culture where its students must have the proverbial exam booklet in their hands at all times. It starts with issues like the emphasis of grade point average and the disincentive for academic risk taking, and it ends with a handicapped, competitive groping toward the models of Success and Glory...
...begin with, Harvard has been overall unsuccessful in its attempts to provide a liberal-arts education. The burden of unexciting, core survey courses combined with fairly strict and rigorous concentration requirements provide for very little room to truly experiment. On top of this, the cutthroat environment around letter grades and GPA, which is perhaps unwittingly fostered by departments, the administration, and the Office of Career Services, ensures that even if we do test uncharted waters, we won’t really have the courage to do anything with it. Our hands are full—or at least...
Just literally, if you’re missing a hand, it makes a lot of things difficult, especially building something from scratch. Without that extra hand, Harvard students fumble their own imaginations. As a result, creativity exists at Harvard but only in trace amounts. With that exam booklet always in hand, most people only have time to create a persona rather than their masterpieces. We get walking, talking works-of-art rather than artists. We all have things to say, but even the best fall victim to the environment and the little Type-A sixth grader huddled inside their souls...