What’s normal at Harvard, but weird at other colleges?-新东方前途出国

What’s normal at Harvard, but weird at other colleges? 

You enter Harvard after having graduated at the top or very near the top of your high school class. You were probably one of the all-around, good students, socially active, involved in your local community. You were probably named “Most Likely To Succeed” or something equally pithy. Academically and in general, you were near the top of the pyramid: the 98th percentile or higher. You got amazing scores on the SATs. You won awards for this or that during graduation. 

Then you get to Harvard, and you’re average. If you’re lucky. Everybody else is so much smarter than you. You take the required reading test that everybody takes during Freshman Week, and you’re certain you did fine. Oops, no you didn’t do fine. Nobody did fine, everybody is required to take remedial reading and expository writing. I am completely serious. In my class, we read “Lolita” and what that has to do with expository writing escapes me to this day. 

There is a myth that you have to demonstrate the ability to swim 100 yards in the pool, because the Widener Memorial Library, the second or third largest library system in the world, was built to memorialize Harry Elkins Widener, who went down with the Titanic. The myth turns out to be true: you have to make an appointment with the pool people and prove that you can do four laps without drowning. It’s kind of silly, because the pool is heated to 80 degrees and brightly lit with two or three lifeguards standing around and you’re in a normal swimsuit, whereas Harry Widener’s water was below freezing in the middle of the night, and he was fully clothed and wearing a lifebelt, surrounded by a thousand other panicked people thrashing about in the North Atlantic. It’s not quite the same thing. 

By the end of your second week, you are convinced that Harvard made a terrible mistake when they admitted you; you must have been a fluke. Your roommate speaks three foreign languages fluently. He’s been to Khartoum (“lovely place,” he says). You attend your music theory class and find someone named Yo-Yo Ma sitting next to you who asks if he can borrow a pencil; you have no idea who he is. Another guy in your class is kind of goofy and has weird ideas… he will go on to become a world-renowned director and producer of opera, a wunderkind. Caroline Kennedy is one of your classmates - yes, that Caroline Kennedy. You never interact with her, but you see her coming out of the girls’ bathroom one day in the Science Center. Leonard Bernstein has dinner in your dining hall one evening when he’s on campus giving lectures. He does not want to talk about music; he wants to talk about international politics. This is disappointing as it seems to defeat the purpose somewhat. He certainly enjoys his wine. Boris Goldavsky, stage manager and producer for the Metropolitan Opera, is a surprise guest lecturer one day, because the Met happens to be on tour in Boston that week and he and your professor are old friends. One morning on your way to psychology class, you catch sight of B.F. Skinner crossing the street against the light. So much for operational conditioning... 

Eventually you get used to all this and it becomes normal.