Word: rumplestiltskin
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...such rationalizations soon found more substantial support, for Rumplestiltskin began to notice that Harvard's version of excellence was not exactly the same as that affirmed by many others. Indeed, he found, Harvard prized only a very peculiar sort of excellence...
...Harvard version of excellence was a bit peculiar. It was competitive. Nothing was excellent if it could be excelled. The measure of excellence was never Rumplestiltskin, but rather a metaphysical absolute variously identified as "Veritas", (in academic work), "professional competence" (in extracurricular activities), and "intelligence" (in social situations...
...University's attitude towards moral excellence was purely punitive, its attitude towards physical virtue was the reverse. Rumplestiltskin found that while the University encouraged athletics for all, it encouraged the athletic endeavors of the naturally proficient with especial fervor. The most excellent athletes were given rewards of cash and kudos, and put into the entertainment business on weekends. And yet, strangely, the University did not seem to believe that excellence was the only standard, for it also required the physically incompetent to perform alarming feats during their first year of residence. It seemed to be a case of "everybody...
...realm of the intellect that the University made its greatest demands for excellence, and it was in his examination of the intellect that Rumplestiltskin discovered his best excuses for denying the importance of excellence...
...first measure of intellectual excellence was given even before he arrived in Cambridge, a series of tests in which people asked him to manipulate verbal and mathematical symbols very rapidly, asked him to give "correct" answers to ambiguous questions, and tested his capacity for making or discovering analogies. Rumplestiltskin, it appeared, could do all of these things about 1/16 as fast as the University's electronic calculator, and so he was immediately admitted to the University as a distinguished student...