Life at Harvard

Ah, the day of visiting Harvard. It had a strange start, as Kathy's boyfriend suddenly dashed into the room Kramer style, presumably to make sure his girlfriend wasn't cheating on him. But it was Fiona, the roommate, who had bothered to run to the nearest dining hall and bring me back a full breakfast because she "wasn't sure what I'd like." But before long, it was lunchtime and Kathy and I were due for a lunch playdate, as a token of my appreciation. A simple BBQ burger at a place on campus did the trick and afterward there were no more delays or excuses, I was off to Harvard law.

The admissions office, not surprisingly, was very mean and generally wanted me to go away. I did, however, take the liberty of running around the buildings as much as I could, and I quickly found myself in an underground tunnel that connected all the law buildings, stopping in each building along the way. In my adventures, I happened upon JOLT, the Journal of Law and Technology - the one I'm interested in. The students staffing the office were real nice, and handed me their latest printed copy, and were generally more receptive than pretty much anyone else I spoke with all day long. At the last building, which appeared to be the law students' common building, I found the law bookstore and purchased a very clever Harvard Law t-shirt, while the people staffing that store were nice enough to be complimenting the shirt I was wearing. More importantly, on the way out that building I looked at the bulletin boards to see if there were any events happening that night. Thankfully, there was a lecture being given by the new Center for Citizen Media. They basically study the impact of the net on news media, and the lecture was set for 7. So I decided I'd sneak in and see what happened.

But before that, I had a couple hours to kill and a small appetite. I ended up following Fiona around, going with her into an economics class (which, despite being a 4-person discussion-based class, was way boring), and then to the dining hall for a snack. I have to say that the Harvard housing system is really cool – there are lots of ‘houses' (dorms), they're all smaller, the rooms are nicer and most have their own dining halls. Think Harry Potter, just without all that magic wand crap. Before long, it came time for the lecture, so I was back off to the law school, this time in blistering post-sunset cold.

The lecture wasn't a far cry from what I expected. This guy did a really good analysis of the sort of ‘people's media' that's happening with blogs, podcasting, etc. and it seems like something I'd really love to get involved in, should I get madly lucky and wind up at Harvard.

And then it struck me - March is the month of love. It's official; you can Google it. I loved the idea of going to Harvard - right as I hopped on a bus with Philip Trick to go over to the Boston U neighborhood for dinner and a game of catch-up. Apparently the bug had bitten him too, as he got back together with high school girlfriend Sorelle.

ps - for those who are wondering, I asked Phil about people from Oakridge who I hadn't heard from. He hadn't talked to many, but he did know that - get this - Conor's got his heart set on going to clown school, and Daniel went into the Air Force.

Dinner at a popular college bar, consisting of wings, a burger and fries, felt like comfort food in a town full of hot pots and Chinese food of countless varieties. I ended up making it home a couple hours later than I had expected, and I started to feel tense, because I had to get up early to make it back to NY. As it would turn out, the next day I'd feel love in even more ways than I had expected.
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