IvyGate Summer Session: Meet (and Begin to Heckle) Your Guest Editors
Writing this blog is fun but not writing it is divine. Our June hiatus has been better than we could have possibly imagined. Our sleep is more restful; our strength is that of ten men; our libido — well, let’s just say there’s a reason you haven’t heard much from Drew Gilpin Faust lately.
We’ll continue to be on vacation through September, thinking of you. (Half of us is at the beach right now, where there is no shortage of post fodder.) In the meantime, we’re handing the site over to a slate of guest editors, two at a time for two-week stints through July and August. First up: Hal Parker and Jacob Savage, Princeton ‘08 and ‘06. You’ll meet the others as their shifts come up. Some are funny, some are brainy, and one of them is, like, 17. Be nice!
You can reach the summer team at a new email address: ivygate.guest@gmail.com. (Mail sent to our usual inbox will auto-forward to them as well.) A solid backlog of tips has piled up over the last few weeks, but now would be a good time to unload whatever you’ve been sitting on.
Anyway, gotta go. There’s a Porsche we need to key.
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June 29th, 2007 at 11:58 am
key up the Harvard Porsche!! I’m here for the summer and wow, morbid. So far, I’ve compiled the following reasons that Harvard sucsk.
Extremely weak wireless connection (when available).
You literally must step over bums to walk on the sidewalk right outside the gates.
The SOLE dining hall closes at 7:15 p.m.
Undergrads are rarely taught by professors.
The rooms have no cable TV outlets.
Administrative offices never reply to important email inquiries by undergrads.
You can’t go anywhere without having to ignore a beggar.
The campus food sucks.
You pay $3 for bottled water at surrounding shops.
Dorms are spread out among the city with few grassy areas for socializing.
Most houses have 2 rooms per floor “section,” which kills social life.
Harvard undergrads say “Harvard actually kinda sucks.”
Not a single one of Harvard’s “we have 90 libraries” are open at night.
Other Ivy’s laugh at you.
Harvard doesn’t believe in air-conditioning.
Most of the people walking around “campus” have no association with Harvard.
Virgins.
Nothing happens until 11pm and everything stops at 1am (mandatory).
There’s absolutely NO sense of community.
June 29th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
By the way, tell your readers to download Safari for Windows. It’s RSS feeds automatically indicate when a new entry is published, so when you go on hiatus again, past readers won’t forget IvyGate exists.
June 29th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
See? No comments yet! Safari.
July 2nd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
prospy, give yourself a little more time before you go on another tirade. You’re experiencing Harvard summer, which is not at all the same as term-time Harvard. Counterpoints:
1. Wireless isn’t weak everywhere, and Cambridge is in the process of making the whole city wireless accessible. Most cities can’t say that.
2. You live in a city. Cities have homeless populations. If you’d like to help alleviate the problem, consider volunteering at the Harvard Square Homeless shelter, largely staffed by undergrads. Otherwise, deal.
3. Only during the summer (and select holiday periods) is there merely one dining hall open. Yes, frosh are technically supposed to eat only in Annenberg, but you’ll find that you could eat in any of the upperclass dorms if you know which enforce interhouse restrictions during certain nights and times. And, yeah, 7:15 can suck, but there’s also brain break during the year, and most house dining halls have things like beverages and cereal available throughout the night. You won’t starve.
4. Professors often teach undergrads. It’s true that in large classes section work is typically led by grad students, but professors lecture, are often very available in office hours, and lead a great number of seminars and small-format classes (depending on your concentration).
5. You don’t need cable. Deal.
6. Administrative offices do a lot of work over the summer. Chill out and consider going through your prospective advisor/proctor for help.
7. Seriously, quit whining about homeless people.
8. Trust me, the food could be worse. And you’ll find that house food is much better than ‘berg food. Learn to improvise with what you have.
9. If you’re buying bottled water from surrounding shops, you’re a putz. Your bathroom has a tap, and vending machines sell water for under three bucks.
10. Each house has a grassy area for socializing, and the yard is series of grassy areas. There’s also a little something called “The Charles River.” Maybe you should visit it sometime.
11. Your observation about room layouts is totally wrong. If you’d looked at Lev towers, new Quincy or Currier you’d know that. And guess what? Social life barely exists during the summer. Wait until the fall to decide whether you have one.
12. Harvard students complain. Deal.
13. Patently untrue. During the year, Lamont is a 24 hour library. Cabot is open 24 hours during exams. Several other libraries have hours into the evening.
14. And Harvard laughs at other Ivies. That’s the whole point of going to an Ivy.
15. It does in classrooms, libraries, administrative buildings, and presumably in the pub. Buy a fan.
16. It’s a tourist attraction. Deal. During the year far more people will be Harvard affiliates. Ignore the rest.
17. Seriously? Get a life.
18. The shut-down hours of most things have more to do with the city of Boston than Harvard. Clubs and bars throughout the city shut their doors at 2 (not 1) am. Plenty of things happen before 11, particularly if you go into the city. And if you really need to do something after 2 am, make a friend in a final club.
19. Repeat after me: I AM IN CAMBRIDGE IN THE SUMMER. VERY FEW STUDENTS ARE ON CAMPUS. If you’re actually interested in a sense of community, join a group. Play a sport. Make some friends.
(And you don’t need Safari to download an RSS reader.)
July 2nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Touché (almost). Safari is by far the easiest way, it shows you the number of unread posts as soon as they’re posted. Go rebuttal though.
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I can’t really argue, since I’ve never used Safari, but I don’t see how it can be any faster than gmail’s reader, which to the best of my knowledge does what you just described.
July 10th, 2007 at 5:06 am
I am happy to read all this succes: you deserve it completely. Proud to work with you in Boston, next june. Please, take all the good thoughts streaming from my heart to you…