Progress of Some Sort

Now that I'm done with this whole Harvard gig, I ought to reflect a bit. I remember writing my first sentence for my first essay for my first class . . . a rather anxious undertaking. I'd write a sentence and then panic: is that sentence smart enough? It has to be a Harvard sentence. It's for a Harvard assignment, and it will be read by a Harvard professor. Is that how they write their sentences here? Is that how Harvard scholars string their words together? Is my vocabulary embarrassingly shallow? I'll write it again. O.K., how about THAT sentence. Uh oh, am I trying too hard? Is that a vacuous thought that amounts to no more than a thinly-veiled attempt at sounding intelligent? Will I be exposed for the sham that I am?

It went on and on like that.

And then, by the end of the year, I was turning in a 34 page paper that largely disagreed with the professor's position, the very same professor that would be reading and grading the paper. (What can I say? He was wrong, really wrong.)

None of this means I think I'm smarter than Harvard academics. Far from it. If I was honest with myself (and because the ed school is an entirely different animal than the other schools), I'm in the bottom 1% of the university. I'm not bummed out about it or anything, I've just seen the intellectual acumen of folks around here, so I know my place.

But now, at the end of the year, I find I'm not really intimidated by all this brilliance. I'm not brilliant myself, but I'm also not that insecure when I'm amongst the geniuses. They're smart, but they're mortal.

I'll consider that my Harvard education.

(And I like cooler bands than they do anyway).