9 June, 2006 | Leave a Comment
If you graduated from Harvard yesterday with a bachelor’s degree, you owe me big time. Do you realize that I risked my life so that you could begin your studies in the fall of 2002 and graduate this week? Do you have any clue what I went through, you little bastards?
Perhaps I should start at the beginning. In the wake of 9/11, I was still new to the Boston area and was looking for a job. To pay the rent, I worked as a temp. (I have a long and storied career as a temp, spanning five states – god, that’s pathetic). If you sign up with a temp agency in Cambridge, Mass., you end up at Harvard. There is no way to avoid this.
The weeks following 9/11 were a very tense time, especially in the Northeast. I made the rounds at Harvard, working in the Dean’s office (where occasionally some irate person would call, prompted by Fox News, and scream at me because Harvard took money from the bin Laden family. I usually just hung up on them. Unprofessional, yes, but then I was a temp and didn’t give a shit.) Eventually I ended up in the undergraduate admissions office – that gatekeeper of elitism – just as the anthrax frenzy began.
It’s difficult to appreciate now the sheer hysteria that erupted around the postal services during the fall of 2001. Postal workers and mail recipients alike had died from anthrax inhalation. Americans were already on edge and then this happened and people flipped out. Many Americans felt that just opening their Visa bill could result in a horrific death. There were endless news reports about the precautions one should take when handling mail. The U.S. Postal Service inspired more feelings of terror than Al-Qaeda. (You may think I’m exaggerating, but that’s honestly how it was.)
Luckily for me, during this time my job in the admissions office required me to open literally hundreds of pieces of mail each day in the form of applications, letters of reference, transcripts, etc. This mail came from around the world and had passed through every postal sorting center in the country. The overlords of the Harvard College admissions office were clearly worried about the health and safety of their workers, including temps and a handful of Harvard students who were forced into indentured servitude. To protect us, they took the extraordinary step of throwing a box of latex gloves and disposable masks onto the large conference table where we sat. Then they left us to our fate.
You really can’t last long wearing one of those disposable masks. After a while, your nasal passages completely dry out and you get a sore throat. Ironically, these symptoms make you think you have anthrax poisoning. The gloves are also terrible. So after a few days of this, the vast majority of us gave up on prophylactics and threw caution to the wind. [Obviously I’m still alive, so don’t get your hopes up for how this story might end.]
Most of us spent the day wondering things like, “Is this the envelope that’s going to kill me?” or “Is that white powder?” or “Is this package ticking?” (The Unabomber was a Harvard alum.) You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just quit. Well, I needed the money and normal life had not yet resumed at that point – I was lucky just to have this (potentially deadly) job. And there was also this feeling pervading the nation that anyone who altered their normal routine out of fear was a wuss and a disgrace to all Americans. Don’t let the terrorists win! So I persevered like a brave little solider. And it wasn’t all bad. There were moments of entertainment, like stumbling upon that rare semi-nude applicant photo, which promptly went up on the bulletin board. Some applicants also sent food such as cookies or regional delicacies, which no one dared touch. But making fun of idiots like this killed a lot of time.
So you see, Class of 2006, you would not have received your diplomas yesterday if me and my co-workers had not bravely faced down a terrorist threat – alone, I might add, since no one from the university gave a damn. One may expect their work to kill them if they’re in the Marines or they wash windows on skyscrapers, but at Harvard? That is above and beyond, my friends. And all I got in return was slave wages and an ulcer. So am I glad your commencement exercises yesterday were ruined by torrential rain? The answer to that would have to be yes.
[tags]Harvard, Anthrax[/tags]
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Anglofille, I am quite surprised that you resent putting your life on the line for the world’s future oligarchs, also known as the Harvard Class of 2006. You should feel grateful for having served your future rulers.
Contrary to the ravings of frothing conservative commentators, Harvard University, one of the most conservative institutions in America, is an incubator for the world’s crony capitalists. Sure Harvard throws in a sprinkling of women and non-white people to add a little flavor to its bland, white, male, protestant porridge, but this is a feeble attempt to cover a pine box with a mahogany veneer – it’s still pine box underneath.
Go to Harvard, have fun, network, and make contacts with future corporate dictators of the world!
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You are completely right. It’s hilarious that conservatives view Harvard as this bastion of liberalism — nothing could be further from the truth. It’s conservative to the core, yet most of the people who work and study there view themselves as being so enlightened. HA!
