Ross Douthat is Bitter About Harvard

I've been meaning to post for a while now about Ross Douthat's Atlantic piece about how Harvard let him down so much. However, I keep not wanting to actually read the damn thing, since Brad DeLong's discussion of it made it sound so icky I haven't been able to find the stomach for it yet. Oh, and it's also subscribers-only, so I'd have to track down a print magazine. Like I have time for that.

So it's not nice for me to say mean things about this article I haven't read. Anyway, Ross is probably just going through the typical post-Harvard letdown. "Oh fuck, what am I going to do now? I've go this fancy degree around my neck, all my classmates are already published, and I still feel like I'm faking it and don't know anything about anything." Not that I'm projecting or anything. Don't worry, Ross, all that fades. After a while you realize that it was not Harvard's job to educate you, but Harvard's job to take your money and give you a degree. If, surrounded by smart people and given suggestions of interesting books to read and think about, you actually get some education, that's gravy. But trust me, you won't know whether you learned anything until several years after you've graduated. It's called perspective. I may not have much of it yet, but I've got more than you do, bucko.

I learned neither more nor less at Harvard than I learned before or since my time there. Which is to say, I learned a lot, but not enough, and that I realize I have a lot of learning yet to do, and that, although my education was once plausibly someone else's responsibility in addition to my own, it no longer is. Nobody else now cares, or in truth ever really cared that I learn from this life. Harvard taught me that, and it's not, after all, such a small thing to know.