我來自公立學校，對主導哈佛的私立學校文化、對享有巨大特權的孩子們完全沒有準備，他們的父親每年為他們支付數萬美元加入期末俱樂部。令我目瞪口呆的是，有那麽多同學實事求是地說，他們畢業後“投資銀行”已經排著隊等著他們。
我還對我的許多課程的平庸感到震驚，特別是助教主導的每周討論部分。這些往往是極其痛苦的。很明顯，大多數同學都沒有完成指定的閱讀，助教會花一個小時在黑暗中進行刺探，試圖讓我們說點什麽，任何事情。 ?
Having come from a public school, I was totally unprepared for the private school culture that dominated Harvard, for the children of immense privilege, whose fathers would pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for them to join finals clubs. I was utterly dumbfounded by the number of classmates who stated matter-of-factly that they already had jobs lined up after graduation in “i-banking”.
I was also shocked by the mediocrity of many of my classes, particularly the teaching assistant-led weekly discussion sections. These were more often than not extremely painful. It was obvious that most classmates had not completed the assigned reading, and the teaching assistant would spend the hour taking stabs in the dark, trying to get us to say something, anything.
