Are Harvard students taught to say this when someone asks them where they go/went to school? In my experience, this has always been the response when I ask a Harvard student/grad. When I first heard this, my first thought was that there are many colleges in Boston. When they finally mention Harvard, my sarcastic response is: “I never heard of that college. Is it any good?” If it’s someone I know little bit better, it’s “Did you think that I never heard of Harvard? So you think I’m an idiot, huh?”
Perhaps, the purpose of the response is to not appear that one is bragging. But the “I went to school in Boston” response ends up being somewhat condescending, which defeats its purpose.
We’re not taught to do it exactly, but I used to do it sometimes. No, we don’t think you haven’t heard of Harvard. We think you have heard of Harvard, and we don’t feel like dealing with the big reaction it always gets.
Now I just give a straight answer and get it over with.
People also say that about living there. Very rarely does “I live in Boston” mean Boston proper.
ETA: I love meeting Harvard folks because then I can ask, “isnt that the school that lost its APA accrediting for having a crappy psych PhD program…or where that psychiatrist convinced that student he was sexually abused as a child and then he committed suicide when he realized he’d been brainwashed? Oh right–it was both.”
I can’t speak for Harvard grads, but I can see deflecting it. My first degree* is in Molecular Biology, but when people ask me what my first BS is in, I just say “biology”. I’ve noticed that if I say “molecular biology” people automatically think I’m some kind of genius. I’m not. I’m guessing it’s similar for people who went to Harvard.
*Second degree is in Nursing…as of three days ago! I just graduated! woohoo!
The funny things is, being Aussie and unfamiliar with the phrase, on seeing the thread title I thought it meant exactly the opposite. Until I moused-over I assumed it was used by someone who went to a Boston school other than Harvard to assume some of its cachet.
I’d say not mentioning where you went to college because you assume people will be jealous is worse than just saying it. If someone’s going to be jealous, that’s their problem not yours.
Yeah, I “went to school in Boston,” and I use it all the time. There are a lot of people who react badly to the name Harvard – look at living_in_hell’s response in this thread. It’s as if people assume you are saying the name of your school in order to be a snob or express your superiority, and feel an immediate need to put you or your school down. If somebody said they went to the University of Alberta, would you be compelled to say, “Isn’t that the school where the Dean of Medicine had to resign because he plagiarized his graduation banquet speech?”
Better to say “I went to school in Boston” and avoid the problem. There are plenty of schools in the Boston area to which you could be referring, and besides when I’m talking about it in a social context, I’m usually explaining having lived on the East Coast, or discussing Boston weather, so the specific school is an unnecessary distraction. BTW, I was never taught to say, “I went to school in Boston,” I just started doing it after too many bad reactions.
Maybe the jealousy is someone else’s problem, but the evening of nasty comments about your school, and "Ha ha, you don’t even know ‘X’ and you went to Haaarvaahd,’ and “Well obviously we need to consult her because she’s clearly so much smarter than the rest of us,” is painful and definitely your problem.
Knocks em down a bit off their high horse. I think that school is school is school…but Ivy Leagues get some sort of special admiration and I think it works two ways. I have many friends who went to Harvard and a lot of them say it and roll their eyes, like “I’m more embarrassed to say it than not.” Yet without the eye rolling I think there’s an assumption that other people will react in admiration–it’s sort of the difference between old money and new money. Maybe it’s “damned if you do damned if you don’t.”
"If somebody said they went to the University of Alberta, would you be compelled to say, “Isn’t that the school where the Dean of Medicine had to resign because he plagiarized his graduation banquet speech?”
Sure–why not? I think that making an assumption you will have a reaction reinforces the issue…like “those plebeians will be so upset or jealous or mean I won’t even say it.” Then again, like I said already, talking about that stuff is kind of gauche IMO anyway.
What an odd thread–do people even ask people where they went to school? I always thought no one cared after high school. Huh.
It can be a real conversation stopper. A lot of people who dont live in the Northeast just don’t know what to say as a response. Some people make fun, but the first thought a lot of people have is “Oh, you’re really smart”. Of course, most folks don’t want to say that, because it sounds idiotic. So, there is this silence while they think about what to say.
I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, or anything close. I’ve just seen it happen more than once.
I didn’t go to Harvard, but I have two degrees from Yale. If someone asks me where what schools I attended, I tell them. If the only reason I’m mentioning a school is to provide some context for the many places I’ve lived, I just say that I was in New Haven or CT. The precise school I attended is rarely relevant, but I’ve worked or studied at five and like to provide some geographical context to my stories.
MIT grad, I used to do the “Boston” thing too, since you either get a) “You must be SOOOOO smart!”, or b) “You must think you’re SOOOOO smart!” That gets really old really quickly. Newsflash, almost all of us met people who were frighteningly smart and made us feel like idiots. We do know that we’re not better than everyone. Hell, in a lot of ways I’m much worse than most people.
living_in_hell, speaking not as a mod but as someone with multiple degrees (none of them from big name schools), I gotta say, you’re coming across as a complete twat in this thread.
living_in_hell-IMO you have an inferiority complex about your education (I do too, so don’t bother). Harvard IS a prestigous school, and people SHOULD be proud of it!
[mod]twickster, you know better than to call another poster a twat in an MPSIMS thread – and, yes, saying that he or she is “coming across as a twat” amounts to saying he or she is a twat. Don’t do this again.
I think that making an assumption you will have a reaction reinforces the issue…like “those plebeians will be so upset or jealous or mean I won’t even say it.” Then again, like I said already, talking about that stuff is kind of gauche IMO anyway.
