Today we celebrate my true love, aka "Harvard Muffin."

We moved to the Boston area in 1995.  We'd been living together two months, going out for six, friends for a year.

Our first day here, while we walked around the Back Bay oohing and aahing and completely overwhelming ourselves on greasy food, overpriced tchotchkes, incredible bookstores, secondhand smoke, and elaborate northeastern brick architecture of the late 1800s, I told my true love how a great uncle of mine had gotten kicked out of Harvard for selling test answers only to have his father buy him a place at another area university, Boston College or Boston University, I couldn't remember which, by virtue of some whopping fat donation, enough to build a library or something.  (This was according to my mother by way of goodness knows which hyperbolizing relative(s), or even how many.)

"Wow.  So, do you think you can get me in?"

"Um, no."

I went on to remind him that I am a five-time college drop-out with no degrees, and that even if anyone old enough to know the truth of this story were still alive, I don't speak to that side of the family.  So sorry, honey, I had to tell him, but I've got no pull, and even if I did, well, ew.

What I didn't realize at the time was that my true love had always wanted a college degree, and not just any college degree, but a really good one.  Ivy league.  Brandied, tweeded, and oak paneled.  My true love had started college a long time ago at the proper age, but had gotten discouraged and also dropped out.  This did not ultimately prevent him from achieving a high level position as a computer engineer with a six-figure salary.  It has always, however, prevented him from feeling like a success.

My true love started taking classes at Harvard Extension a few years ago, just to see what they were like, and what he would be like in that environment.  He LOVED it.  He knew he wanted a Harvard degree, but felt sure that he could never get into Harvard University.  (They only accept something like one percent of all applicants.)  However, the extension school uses the same professors and resources as the university, only offers them to students at greatly reduced prices.

Anyone with the course fees can take classes at Harvard Extension School, just like anyone can take classes through UCLA Extension.  I've heard Hilary Duff has taken classes at Harvard Extension.  Not just anyone can get a degree through Harvard Extension School though.  Though I doubt very much that the standards are as severe as those for the regular university, there are still standards, and people who wish to become degree candidates must apply and submit thorough background information about themselves just like anyone applying to any reputable college.

My true love got the application and sat on it for a few semesters.  He took it out and looked at it, and then put it away many, many times.  Finally, this year, he pulled himself together, filled it out, and turned it in.

I was extremely proud of my true love.  For him to apply meant really facing up to things from his past that don't please him, plus putting aside his fears of rejection, plus he had to go and meet with people and ask them questions about how to apply and what kind of strategies to use, he had to dredge up every bit of his academic record from two decades and both coasts of the U.S., he had to fill out forms, and he had to accept constructive criticism from me about his essay.  None of this was easy.  In fact it took some balls.

My true love is turning 40 on Sunday.  (yay)  Meanwhile, on Tuesday he received a packet in the mail from the Harvard Extension School.  Do I have to tell you what was in the packet?  Well, I'm going to anyway:  yes, an acceptance letter and a bunch of materials on resources now available to him as a full-fledged, enrolled degree candidate.

Oh, and there was also a note somewhere in all that about how he made the Dean's List for 2006-2007, something no one had ever bothered to mention before.

I am bursting with pride and happiness for this man!  Bursting!  And though I personally tend to be somewhat less impressed by the Harvard brand than he and Frasier Crane, I am thrilled that the extension school has the intelligence to realize what a fantastically gifted, brilliant guy he is, an absolute asset to any community of intellectuals.

I regret that I do not have more photos of him to show you; he is camera-shy.  But it's probably just as well.  If you saw how cute he is, you'd only try to steal him from me.

I don't love him more just because he's now an official Harvard muffin, and I didn't love him before just because he was smart enough to take classes there and get good grades.  Also, it should be noted that I don't only love him on Thursdays.

I am wicked proud of him, though, more than anything else just for trying, for choosing something he really wants and really going after it, for recognizing that he deserves it even without such validation as being told he'd made Dean's list, and even though it was possible that he might not be permitted to have the experience he most desired -- and all at the age of not-quite-40.

And I am relieved Harvard Extension accepted him so I don't have to go over there and kick their privileged asses crimson with my little rubber foot.

Comments

[Ian Lamont]

Both of you should be proud! It's an accomplishment to get in the program, and to maintain a high enough GPA to get on the Dean's List.

Good luck at the Extension School ... there are a lot of great programs there, and opportunities for students who are willing to put in the necessary time and effort to follow through to the end.

[Sara]

Thank you, Ian! My true love is thrilled (and relieved), and I assure you the only person who will be more proud than I am will be his mama.

Seriously, there are a lot of great programs there and terrific opportunities even for students who just want to attend a class or two, à la carte as it were. The great thing about the Extension School is that these opportunities really are for everyone, not just the privileged. I've known lots of people in the last twelve years who've enrolled in some of these programs, some who came from as far away as Brazil, China, and Eastern Europe to study things as diverse as business management, environmental management, and teaching English as a second language, just at the Extension School, and not very many of them had anything but glowing things to say.

I'm just really happy that the school recognizes the potential in my true love, too. He's no slouch. :)

[The Goldfish]

This is excellent news! Hooray for your true love! Returning to education after a long break takes a lot of courage and determination, as well as the capacity to readjust the gears in your head (when you go to college straight from school, all that essay-writing and critical analysis is second nature, later on it takes some intellectual acrobats to start thinking like that again).

Very well done to him! :-)

[Sara]

Thank you, Goldfish! I heartily concur.

[elizabeth]

Congrats to your true love on having the courage and commitment to follow his dreams - and for getting on the deans list. Adult learners are typically higher motivated and see direct application right away (at least where we worked with them in the UK), but it still takes a great effort and commitment to fit that all that study into an already packed adult life.

On a side note, we used to drive Americans insane overseas, I remember this one super pretentious 19-20 year old who said she was in Cambridge when I asked where she went to Uni. I had the look of suitably impressed and asked which of the colleges she was at. She then looked confused and said she lived in CAMBRIDGE, MASS. I sort of patted her on the shoulder and told her not to feel too bad about not getting into Cambridge and asked if she had found a uni in Mass to go to. She got really huffy and said she went to (dramatic pause) Harvard.

I gave her a baffled look which indicated I had never heard of it. "Oh, that's nice, it is any good?"

She stomped away.

It is just that here (UK) a "new" college which can't be rated with the 126 "traditional" universities are those who have only been open 150 years. So there is a perverse pleasure taken in playing the aloof Brit doing a head patting on those "revolutionaries" and thier "new schools" (I know Harvard is 350 years old - But it is still fun to play).

[Sara]

ha ha ha

Yeah, when I attended the Sorbonne for summer school one year, it did not escape my notice that the classroom I was sitting in was probably older than my country.

My lack of impressed-ness with the Harvard brand specifically and private colleges generally is that one of the schools I dropped out of was UCLA, where it is my belief you can get every bit as good or even great an education (at 1/2 the cost) but it is very much more difficult to do so. I was such a hot item academically back then (even though I only had a B+ average; it was my test scores) that I was accepted early by the school in 1981, but then when I got there had to compete with 30,000 other undergraduate students for things like dorms, classes, and parking. Now the University of California system is so very overcrowded that I don't think I could even get admitted, all other things being equal. I not only had unimpressive grades in high school, but no extra-curricular activities because when I was not in class, I was almost always working at one of five or six part-time jobs, several of which I held concurrently, because nobody was going to pay my college tuition, oh and meanwhile my father was having a mid-life crisis so I had to kick in for some of the house payments on the triple-mortgaged suburban family home every once in awhile, too.

A large proportion of the students I encountered at UCLA had equal or more challenging circumstances to overcome, and most of them didn't drop out like I did because though many of them had to work full-time while attending classes full-time, too, most of them didn't get perspective-altering closed head injuries in the middle of the first year. Nowadays, I hear a prospective UC student might have all that, a drunken mother, and also have to have a 5.0 GPA (which wasn't even possible in my day) achieved through substantial extracurricular work just to get on the waiting list. Harvard and other private American college students seem frankly coddled by comparison. Still, it's a very good school, and I'm really impressed by my true love.

[alphabitch]

Very impressive indeed. That's his picture up there in the corner, right? With the NaBloPoMo tatt on his back?

I only dropped out of my undergraduate program once, but I just recently dropped out of my fourth (fifth, if you count the one I was accepted into but never started) graduate program. Oh, and high school; I dropped out of that too.

[Sara]

Oh yeah, that's him, Alphabitch; excellent guess.

(Actually, unlike nameless tat boy, my true love has long, thick, gorgeous, curly dark brown hair with silver streaks in it. Every woman we know personally covets his hair for herself.)