They Earned Those Letter Jackets
There are some members of the Extension School who deserve special mention. I’ve met them. I won’t use their names, but they give me heart when I feel my resolve crumbling, my sleepiness creeping in. When I realise that a paper is due and I have to go to a meeting instead of sitting over my books at lunchtime. They are the people I’ve met who really stand out even in a population where everyone is proving themselves exceptional. Harvard Extension is not for precious snowflakes- it’s for the climbers who tackle Everest in their spare time. We don’t have parents to hover, or even the comfort of a dorm full of like-minded peers. We have to forge these connections and fend for ourselves. Let me tell you about some of the amazing explorers I’ve met out here in the ice.
They make the world a better place, and they make my classes a better place. I was in a writing class-Harvard demands that you take an expository writing class, just to get into the degree program. Some of the people in the class with me did not pass, and should not have. I read their work. If they worked for me, I would assign them tasks where they did not write for the public eye, until I was certain that their work would be proofread properly. But their hearts were good, and I have confidence that some of them, at least, were enthusiastic about improving, and will take that class again and get the grade that they need to get in.
In that class, there were students from other universities (Harvard Extension is a popular transfer.) There were a few older students, a few very young students, and a lot in between. One of them was a sweet, quiet woman, who was shy about participating in class and yet was one of the early ones. You know the early ones. They’re the ones who show up early, take a seat in the front row, and have all their materials ready. I’m one of the early ones, too, so I had ample opportunity to see just how determined she was.
For lack of a better name, I will call her the Beautiful Writer, because that’s what she was (and likely still is.) Not just physically beautiful, in the robust snow-white-skin-with-dark-hair sort of way, but in the perceptive way, willing to embrace her broken places and make them sources of wisdom and connection. Her writing was excellent. So good it intimidated me, but I’m all right with that. This is Harvard. I expect some intimidation. It turned out to be the best thing possible, because the sense of cooperation with just a tiny bit of competition was good for all of us. Especially, it turned out, for her.
I won’t spill the details that she eventually revealed. It is enough to say that she was a new student, first facing life after the death of a parent who had held her virtually captive in caregiving. We were reading Shirley Jackson, so this was an eerie, eerie coincidence- I had my own coincidental story, and we both went to see the professor after the class finally ended, to thank her and talk about where we’d come from.
The professor (an amazing, energetic woman in a purple shawl, to whom the energy of talking about literature seemed to be lifeblood and breath) was astounded.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” she cried.
The Beautiful Writer looked at me, and I looked at her, and we both looked at the Inspiring Professor.
“I didn’t want to be treated any differently,” she said. “I’ve never done this before. I want to know I can do it, for real, to live up to it all on my own.”
“Why would we tell you?” I chimed in. “This is our chance to really show that we can do it. Yes, the material was hard for us, because we have these background issues… but…”
Beautiful writer picked up the thread. “But this is the most meaningful thing that we’ve ever done, and it means more knowing that we did it as ordinary, everyday students, living up to the ordinary standard.”
What could I possibly add? She was right. She is still right. She is, to me, the embodiment of what makes the Extension school amazing. I met the opposite of this, in the form of a professor whose class I began attending, but then dropped.
“You all come from diverse backgrounds,” he said, “and while the material is very challenging, I can assure you that when it comes time for grading, your background will be taken into account.”
I was not the only one who wrote a letter to my advisor about it. Yes, we’re from different backgrounds, but we’re here to face the same standards, and it does us no favours to consider those backgrounds when grading. I don’t want that. No crutches, no padding, no training wheels. This is Harvard.
Then there are the home school kids. I am all for home schooling in some ways, but there’s a lot to be said for learning to manage packs of people, and get by going to a place you don’t like in an outfit like everyone else’s, working in the same environment, and still finding ways to be innovative and advanced. The home school kids we got were enrolled as early college enrollees, taking courses in languages or other things that interested them.
Great, we are now competing with sixteen-year-old geniuses. And they were. They blew us old folks away in the short term sprint. But in the middle of the term, a different pattern began to emerge, with a clear distinction between the people who were studying regularly, and the people who weren’t, and it crossed all other distinctions pretty evenly. We all learned to respect each other thoroughly, and they had as much to offer us as we did them. No one pretended that we were all the same. I wish we could send our managers here for diversity practice.
They could meet other people I’ve met: the young woman getting her Master’s, now that her daughter was two. The older woman studying Japanese in preparation for a trip. (And the older woman who had been to Japan five times, but could never seem to apply herself properly to learn the language. She dropped out in the second semester. The coursework does separate those who want to work from those who don’t.)
There were the two students who came in because their schedules needed a class at a certain time. They were from a different school, and I will spare that school the shame of connecting its name here, because those students made it very clear that they had no problems with cheating. To the eternal credit of those I was in the class with, the rest of the class was shocked and appalled, and I was never prouder of today’s youth than when I discovered that those sixteen year olds had also dutifully written letters to the instructor about it. Most of us did. We had to. We weren’t just shocked at the potential upset to the grade pool- it was the principle of the thing.
Harvard rattles on and on about ethics, but the truth is very simple. We take it seriously. We have to take it very seriously, because Harvard’s penalties are brutally simple. You cheat, and it’s the end of your career at Harvard. They mean it. I have had sleepless nights worrying about whether I missed citations in papers. Harvard is serious about its honour code, and none of us could sit by and watch. Fear of penalty doesn’t spur us to action, it just puts the questions into clear light, and once we see things clearly, most people make right decisions for reasons having nothing to do with fear of getting caught or blamed in association.
Yeah, I’m proud of my class. My whole class, all the people at the Extension school, since we all have different graduation dates. I’m proud to be a part of them, and although we don’t get as much chance to meet each other as the dorm kids do, I think we have more to be proud of. This the Varsity team when it comes to real life.
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