"That's just what I like about Cambridge - it's the best of both worlds!"
-a student's response after I told him about how I enjoyed the rural setting and close-to-nature feeling of where I live in New Zealand.
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| Outdoorsy like NZ? |
"We'll wait until Harvard time to start."
- Seven minutes past the hour is Harvard time - what a terrible thing to export to the world! I was somewhat pacified after a student explained that Harvard time is necessary because events and classes start and end on the hour, and students need time to walk to the next event or class. But still...
"Andre Watts is such a boring speaker; he honestly has nothing to say."
-I overheard two students talking as they walked by the poster board in the music building. Andre Watts and Andras Schiff are both on campus this week, and this student sounded like he was complaining!? I didn't even know Harvard HAD a music department - it's that small - and they still get people like Watts and Schiff coming through!?
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| The guests in other departments were nothing to complain about, either. |
"The advisors at my Catholic high school refused to sign my paperwork because they said Harvard was full of communists, that I'd flunk out, that it was full of snobs, and, most intriguingly, that I'd lose my soul."
-hmmmm...sounds familiar! This comment was made by the current Dean of Admissions talking about his application process years ago forty years ago.
"There were FOUR guys from Idaho in my freshman dorm - who knew?"
-Dean of Admissions, speaking about the mind-expanding diversity at Harvard.
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| 26 or so LDS undergrads at Harvard at the moment, one of whom is from Idaho from what I can tell. They (whoever can make it) eat dinner together in one of the halls every Sunday after church. |
"ROTC won't be your only extracurricular, but it will probably be your biggest one, which is as it should be."
- dinner with current and prospective ROTC cadets. Noah and I were very impressed with the ROTC students. Independent. Fit. Supportive of each other.
"ROTC paid for me to study Arabic in the Middle East my first two summers and this summer I'm going to Air Force expedition school."
-one of the ROTC cadets. Noah's keen. -Russian instead of Arabic, though.
"I won a drone!"
-Noah went to the drone races and showed some promise.
"Anyone to the right of Marx is welcome to join us."
-generous invitation from the president of the Young Republicans
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| Republican vs Democrats student debate was popular with students. Debates are held weekly during the school year. |
"Can I take a picture of your butt?"
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| The underground stacks |
He said it in such a nice way, too, that my brain did this fuzzy thing, like when Noah says "yes" while shaking his head side-to-side, a Bulgarian gesture that keeps surfacing from his mission. It was at the end of the library tour, and I was the last one from our group to go upstairs out of one of the underground stacks. I'd seen this suspicious-looking guy taking pictures down in the stack, and thought he was just a strange parent who'd disengaged himself from a tour group. I had considered reporting him to the front desk when I walked upstairs. He approached me just as I was the last one going up a narrow stairway.
I was so floored, that all I thought to say was, "my what?"
The guy: "your BUT-ton"
The guy was a campus photographer with a badge that I hadn't noticed.
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| This button allowed me to get into Visitas events. Now you have a picture of it, too. |
Another parent, hearing that Noah was the oldest of six: "You must have the patience of a saint!"
Me: "It's probably the other way around - I get bored easily and like to have a lot going on."
- I found the other parents delightful and interesting. This lady insisted I take her phone number because "Long Island is a lot closer than New Zealand, and if your son ever needs anything..."
Noah: "To be honest, I have a hard time telling the Asian students apart."
-Our kids can tell Islanders apart from each other, and they would also have a good idea if the person was Tongan, Samoan, Maori, Indo-Fijian, or from Kiribati or some other island. We knew black and latin people in the Bronx, in Texas, and in the military. However, our kids have not spent much time around people with Asian heritage. This is one gap in Noah's education that Harvard definitely be able to fill, and I'm thankful.
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| Emily Dickinson's portrait as a child and the bureau where the majority of her poems were found after she died. |
"The last couple of years we are starting to get a few people on our tours who haven't heard of the Titanic."
-tour guide at the Widener Library
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| Reading room dedicated to the son of the woman who donated the library. Her son (class of 1907) died on the Titanic, trying to save his books instead of taking his place in the life boat with his parents. The mother donated the library and his collection of remaining books with the stipulation that the library preserve a replica of his reading room, with fresh flowers and the turning of a page of the Gutenberg Bible every day. |
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| Business "sign" for my "Stanford/MIT Guesthouse". It was not the NZ-type backpacker ("private room, shared bathroom") that I was expecting, to say the least. |
"When I applied and got full financial, my parents still refused to let me go because I had graduated from high school, which was already more than they had done, and they thought it should be enough."
"I worked 60-70 hours a week my first couple of years because my family was behind on their rent and I didn't want them to get evicted."
"My mom and her brother floated from Cuba on a couple of car tires."
"My studies mean the world to my parents. I do it all for them."
- I found the panel discussion with first-generation students moving and memorable.
"I just had the coooolest weekend."
- Noah. I liked it, too.
Books:
