The Experience Of Harvard

A post to a Harvard Magazine article about income disparities between students in which a student from a low income background describes how many of his fellow students could not understand that fifty dollars was a considerable sum of money to him took me back to when my wife and I were in Cambridge where I studied classics and she worked for something under a dollar an hour in a Harvard office.  Times were difficult, money not easily come by.  Harvard students had university supplied health insurance; spouses did not.  When I brought it up with an old Harvard alum, he exclaimed "but that would be socialism!"  We scrounged for food on Saturday nights at the Italian market in the North End;  produce which at the end of that evening was left over and to be discarded we could buy really cheaply, bruised and beginning to spoil, to be sure, but a judicious trim made it all worthwhile.  We had no friends who were in this economic fix, and we were known for our fun boozy (BYO) parties, so we socialized a lot and made a joke of our poverty so as to make it acceptable to the other classics students, because the study of Greek and Latin in those days was still strictly upper class activity we were surrounded by people listed in the Social Register.  They would always speak our names and roll their eyes and say "Charlie and Mary are soooo original and funny," as in poor house derelicts, I guess.  Well, sad to say, Mary never lived to see the happy days when I became a full professor with an endowed chair and a correspondingly pretentious salary.  And when I look back on the climb up the academic ladder and the jump into the gravy train I am reminded of black and white films of the kick, shove, and gouge narratives.  I can't say the experience filled me with joy, but it did not leave any lasting scars either, and one can never mention having a Harvard PhD often enough!