I read this article a week or so ago. And I think it's not entirely the fault of Ivy League schools . Nobody stopped him from making friends who weren't as well off as he was, socioeconomically or intellectually. Nobody ever forced into his brain the paradigm that analytical intelligence is the only true form of intelligence. But there are a couple of grains of truth in there. We ought to take ourselves less seriously from time to time (and this includes those of us still at TJ, striving to get into an Ivy League school). I read on the sidewalk the other day, as I was heading to the library to study for finals: "You have the rest of your life to work in a cubicle."
hmmm- he seems like an idealist though. Some people need a different incentive than becoming an intellectual. Learning to have the skills for the career that you want seem like a better incentive for most people. For example, I do like Chinese for its beauty, but knowing that I'll actually use it in the future is the real reason I spend a lot of time learning it. I think the humanistic education he thinks of goes too far to the other end of the spectrum, rather than making for a sustainable balance of a vocational + liberal arts (hum, math, sci, sosc) education versus a pure big-picture thinking education.
Oh dear. I can see why the author has trouble relating to his plumber. He sounds like a complete snob.
Well...the bulk of his argument is pretty sound, I was just pissed off by his first 7 paragraphs or so, by which I am characterized to be Stupid (I don't go to an Ivy) and Poor (my parents aren't "businesspeople and professionals", my dad delivers chinese food). Woot for alienating reader!
But hey! At least he calls out all those silly Yale and Harvard kids. Everyone knows they spend all their time sitting up in their ivy-encrusted towers, sipping chai lattes and waxing poetic about Faulkner and comparing their MCAT scores. Yeah. Except not.
My feeling is that after all this, even if he were given the chance to live his life over again, he wouldn't have done anything differently.
Well, maybe he would've gone to Harvard over Yale.
In seriousness, I don't disagree with everything he says (indeed, appearance and dress seem to matter unnecessarily a lot here), but he makes vast generalizations which I find to be extremely unfair. Among other things, I don't agree with his discussion of social class. In the beginning of the year, they gathered all of us freshmen for a (what I found to be an extremely insightful) discussion about class. The student body is incredibly diverse.
I'm going to send this to a few friends here to see what they think.
6 comments:
lulu showed this to me. isn't it depressing?
tj kids are a prime example of the disadvantaged elite-to-be. i'm glad i don't live life the way the author describes... it's just not worth it.
I read this article a week or so ago. And I think it's not entirely the fault of Ivy League schools . Nobody stopped him from making friends who weren't as well off as he was, socioeconomically or intellectually. Nobody ever forced into his brain the paradigm that analytical intelligence is the only true form of intelligence. But there are a couple of grains of truth in there. We ought to take ourselves less seriously from time to time (and this includes those of us still at TJ, striving to get into an Ivy League school). I read on the sidewalk the other day, as I was heading to the library to study for finals: "You have the rest of your life to work in a cubicle."
hmmm- he seems like an idealist though. Some people need a different incentive than becoming an intellectual. Learning to have the skills for the career that you want seem like a better incentive for most people. For example, I do like Chinese for its beauty, but knowing that I'll actually use it in the future is the real reason I spend a lot of time learning it. I think the humanistic education he thinks of goes too far to the other end of the spectrum, rather than making for a sustainable balance of a vocational + liberal arts (hum, math, sci, sosc) education versus a pure big-picture thinking education.
Oh dear. I can see why the author has trouble relating to his plumber. He sounds like a complete snob.
Well...the bulk of his argument is pretty sound, I was just pissed off by his first 7 paragraphs or so, by which I am characterized to be Stupid (I don't go to an Ivy) and Poor (my parents aren't "businesspeople and professionals", my dad delivers chinese food). Woot for alienating reader!
But hey! At least he calls out all those silly Yale and Harvard kids. Everyone knows they spend all their time sitting up in their ivy-encrusted towers, sipping chai lattes and waxing poetic about Faulkner and comparing their MCAT scores. Yeah. Except not.
My feeling is that after all this, even if he were given the chance to live his life over again, he wouldn't have done anything differently.
Well, maybe he would've gone to Harvard over Yale.
In seriousness, I don't disagree with everything he says (indeed, appearance and dress seem to matter unnecessarily a lot here), but he makes vast generalizations which I find to be extremely unfair. Among other things, I don't agree with his discussion of social class. In the beginning of the year, they gathered all of us freshmen for a (what I found to be an extremely insightful) discussion about class. The student body is incredibly diverse.
I'm going to send this to a few friends here to see what they think.
this is why you guys are my friends
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