Sunday, February 26, 2006

The Harvard Club wants me, oh yeah, they know they do

Somehow, perhaps through my subscription to the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Harvard University has gotten the idea that I'm an alum. I get regular emails telling me I should attend events like:

El Rufian Castrucho (Castrucho the Hustler) by Lope de Vega

at Gala Hispanic Theatre in Spanish with English surtitles

Date: Sunday, Mar 12, 2006

Time: 2:00PM - 4:00PM ET

cost: $15.00 members/$25.00 nonmembers

and always inviting me to click on the link and join their club.

Of course, there is a fee if nonmembers attend. Part of me wants to pay it for myself and the CSO, show up, and see if we can pass. (What? I know all about Harvard. I've seen Legally Blonde like four times.)

But the truth is, I'm not really one for joining organizations like this one. If my real undergraduate institution, St. Andrews College in North Carolina, had a similar club, there's no way in hell I'd be a member. Linguist Friend (whose Harvard credentials are a damn sight better than mine, meaning they exist) isn't a member of his local Harvard club, though I doubt the one in Ohio is terribly active.

Like with Mensa, something about those clubs creeps me out. It's like a nice but very dumb guy I knew at SA who, after his graduation, got an email address that was something like SAPCgrad@aol.com. All you need to do is look at his email address to know that he thinks "a graduate from St. Andrews" is the best thing he will ever be. Membership in The Harvard club is not that extreme, of course, but it's not a great sign, IMHO.

I have the email I need to send to Harvard to correct the mistake all written in my head. It's brief but a little bit funny about how I couldn't even get in to Barnard.

But somehow, I haven't quite sent it.


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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mensa is a social club. Nothing else. It was really good for me for a period in my life when I needed it. Then I moved on.
I just went to a reunion of sorts of a bunch of Mensa people I haven't seen in ten or fifteen years. It was really weird to see a whole party full of people from the past.