where are my able-bodied male servants, anyway?

[shannon_f_r]

After spending a number of hours today on my hands and knees dealing with an ant infestation, I'm pleased to say that I will no longer have to engage in any manicure-damaging behavior, as of now. That's because boffo  has pronounced me a member of the elite over on john_j_enright 's blog. You see, the thing is--and boffo  has really clued me into my hidden biases against

Comments

[airstrip]

God I hate Ohio State. Everyone thinks I went there.

[airstrip]

It doesn't surprise that a lot of people from Harvard feel more than a little cheated, either. So far as the data suggests, people who go to Harvard--or any elite school, really--only get more people at their level and less free time for all that was spent. It seems that anyone who could have gone has roughly the same life outcome of people who actually went.

[shannon_f_r]

Yeah, I think this is pretty true. But it's more than that. When I was just a simple Midwestern girl--before they taught me the secret handshake, I mean--I chose to go to Harvard because I thought I would be offered some sort of comprehensive liberal arts education superior to what I'd have gotten at the University of Michigan, that I'd learn about the connections between ideas and subjects and basically become one of those Jewish intellectuals I'd always aspired to be (think Hannah Arendt). When it turned out to be just as disconnected and incoherent as anywhere else, I--and a lot of people--felt pretty cheated. Which is not to say that there weren't things about Harvard that I liked a lot--you know, how I get to look down on almost every single person I meet and I worked with a lot of smart professors and what not--but it was less than I wanted it to be.

[airstrip]

So what do you think makes you one of those Jewish intellectuals?

Other than bar/bat mitzvahs.

[shannon_f_r]

Knowing everything.