A Quote by Mike Birbiglia
I was completely unqualified to get into Harvard. But then I went to my interview for Harvard, and the woman asked, 'Why do you want to go here?' And I took out all of my comedy writing samples that I had done. I couldn't have been more delusional in terms of what I thought they wanted in a candidate for college.
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You have to be really tenacious. You have to keep at it. There are many roads to get there. If you can get yourself into Harvard, that's a good way to go, because every Harvard graduating class, the agencies come trolling around and they'll look for you. So if you go to Harvard, you'll get found there.
My mother taught public school, went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.
Before I went to a meeting at the 'Harvard Lampoon,' I had no idea that there was even a comedy magazine at Harvard, let alone that you could write comedy potentially for a living.
I would certainly make the attendance in college paid for, at least at a community college level or a state - you know, a sponsored university level so that if you wanted to go to college and if you had the grades - you might not go to Harvard - but you went to college.
I had a certificate that said, 'Doctor of Mixology, Harvard University,' that I actually got from Harvard University. A friend of mine was a research assistant over there and it was one of those student or university perks and she brought me in on that. So I am a doctorate from Harvard and it only took me one afternoon.
I got a PhD from Harvard and a few years later, there was a girl from Sunderland who hadn't got into Oxford or Cambridge, even though she'd got perfect A-levels. Harvard asked me to come and recruit her because I was recruited out of university by Harvard - they were trying to show that people could make it.
My dad was a singer in a band and neither of my parents went to college, and I ended up getting into Harvard and was the first person in my family that went to college and it happened to be Harvard.
Everyone praises Harvard 'for the students.' But what makes Harvard's students so great is that they are, in many ways, a cross-section of the larger world. They are normal people who happen to be excellent, and this sets them apart. People who go to Yale go because they want to attend Yale. People who go to Harvard go because they can.
If I went to any other college, I probably would have been pre-med. But I felt like I had freedom to do what I wanted to do at Harvard.
It is harder to lie in an interview. A good interview - and it can be polite - is not a one way street like a candidate controlled ad. An interview is not programmed by the candidate and so the candidate can't be exactly sure what will be asked.
Whenever I go to a new team the jabs about being a Harvard guy are always more prevalent. This is mainly because people don't know much about me other than being the Harvard guy that did well on his Wonderlic test. The more time I spend with people, the less the Harvard stuff comes up.
Nearly everything faith-related that I have done at Harvard has been followed by free food, from going to services at Harvard's Episcopal Chaplaincy to attending a day of interfaith discussion and dialogue hosted by the university chaplains in the fall.
There's probably people that go to Harvard and say, 'Listen, I went to Harvard. I got a great education, and I can't find a job, or I didn't become the success that I could have been.' Sure, I mean, you probably have that at every major university.
I wanted to get out of Ashland, and I thought it would be pretty cool to go to school in the East. So I asked my guidance counselor what Ivy League schools were. And I applied to Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth - that was it. My guidance counselor told me I wouldn't get into an Ivy League school. So as my act of resistance, that's all I applied to.
As you leave these gates and re-enter society, one thing is certain: Everyone out there is going to hate you. Never tell anyone in a roadside diner that you went to Harvard. In most situations the correct response to where did you go to school is, "School? Why, I never had much in the way of book learnin' and such." Then, get in your BMW and get the hell out of there.
That said, there are a few clear factors that determine the potential of a university to reach the highest levels of excellence. In the case of Harvard University, it was true that by the time of its tercentenary (300th anniversary of its founding) in 1936, Harvard had already achieved a reputation as a world-class institution. Harvard did not have the stature that it does today.
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