<p>^^I agree. About the last word my daughter would use to describe Harvard and especially her fellow students would be “dull.” Harvard isn’t perfect but it most certainly is not dull.</p>
<p>LottieM: How did you manage to do a semester abroad in your freshman year?</p>
<p>Claudeturpin, great question :-).</p>
<p>Nope, not a great question. LottieM’s post seems pretty clear that she met and drank with Seamus Heaney at Harvard, but got to hang out with him further during a later semester abroad at Trinity College Dublin, presumably while she was a Berkeley student.</p>
<p>LottieM’s post tends to cast her in a worse light than Harvard, but it’s not internally inconsistent. And I would suggest that, for a limited group of people, it identifies what could be a real issue with Harvard: too much family tradition there. That certainly affected my mother’s decision to turn down Radcliffe (65 years or so ago).</p>
<p>^^^JHS, that’s how I read it too.</p>
<p>Then why, I ask, does she list the semester abroad at Trinity in the paragraph for “positives” at Harvard?</p>
<p>Good grief. Her positive was “Drinking with Seamus Heaney”, followup comment " I did a semester abroad at Trinity and got to chill with him some more."</p>
<p>No, it wasn’t dull… A potential housemate stabbed her roomate to death and then killed herself. Not dull at Dunster/Funster house then. Also steve Gould, what a wonderful man. Will never forget the times I spent in his office chatting about baseball…We miss him! I think these responses are from defensive “harvard parents” who have mortgaged their souls for this school. Don’t worry - your financial struggles are probably worth it. It wasn’t an issue for me as a 3rd gen legacy, so it’s hard to figure in the financial stress this school must make for nonleg parents. Bless you, and I hope Harvard pays off for your kids! As for me, after serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa, studying epidemiology, working at CDC, med school, plague hunting and art collecting- life has been anything but dull since Harvard! I still miss the Peabody Museum, and I visited Ireland last year & caught up with Seamus. Good times!</p>
<p>Irony, Irony, Irony. I found Harvard stifling and limiting and conservative. Left it for an amazing DIVERSE public school without weird racial quotas and entitled legacies and all together normal kids who thought they were the bees knees because they got into Harvard. Sillies. I met more brave, smart and better people while in Peace Corps. Berkeley is #1 school for Peace Corps recruitment. GO BEARS!! And don’t get me started on Stanford. My private all-girls prep school inLA was a feeder for USC and Stanford…</p>
<p>As said by many again and again - Harvard (and/or any other particular school including Berkeley) is not for everyone. Period.</p>
<p>I just have to add my 2 cents here, as a Harvard parent…</p>
<p>“GO BEARS”!!! </p>
<p>I am also a Berkeley parent!!</p>
<p>Each school has its great and its not so great. I am proud that my students have gotten to experience both. (Plus I have had some nice places to visit) !! I honestly can tell some great stories of good places to eat, sleep, oh yes, where the secret bathrooms are. My students are much smarter and balanced than before. Isn’t that the whole idea anyway??</p>
<p>Re: Hot breakfast. I like my house’s “cold” breakfast better than Annenberg’s breakfast. We have oatmeal and hot hard-boiled eggs, which are the most edible things in Annenberg’s breakfast anyway. (I like the food here, mostly, but Annenberg’s version of French toast gives me nightmares.) And we have better fruit/fruit salad more often, so far. And plain yogurt! Flavored yogurt has its place, but, O, depressing were the days when there wasn’t any plain.</p>
<p>^The stuff that HU(H)DS produces can hardly be called yogurt.</p>
<p>Hm, point. Yogurt and granola? Not pleasant. Plain yogurt? Not happening. But it does let me make myself cucumber-yogurt salad. * shrug * That’s not breakfast anymore, but it does have at least one acceptable function, imo.</p>
<p>^Haha! And what’s that function?</p>
<p>I don’t think I ever got up early enough for hot breakfast in Annenberg. Guess I didn’t miss anything…</p>
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<p>I would guess about the same as syrup of ipecac…</p>
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<p>Exactly!</p>
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<p>Appetizing :eek:. Thanks to you guys, I’m never going to look at my yogurt in the same way ever again.</p>
<p>I can make and like this: [Cucumber</a> Yogurt Salad Recipe | Simply Recipes](<a href=“http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/cucumber_yogurt_salad/]Cucumber”>Tzatziki (Cucumber Yogurt Salad) Recipe)</p>
<p>I’ve never understood what all the fussing was about with the hot breakfasts deal. For the vast majority of college kids, including those at Harvard, the number of times they get up early enough to eat a hot breakfast from the dining hall in a school year could be counted up on one hand. Thus discontinuing hot breakfasts was no big loss.</p>
<p>There are plenty of athletes who mourn the loss of hot breakfasts in the houses. For those up before dawn rowing in the cold or swimming laps before class, they would sure prefer more than hard boiled eggs and faux yogurt. </p>
<p>Harvard has the most varsity team sports of any Ivy(41). These kids already sacrifice plenty of sleep and study time. Surely offering a satisfying breakfast at one river house and one quad house would not be so taxing on the endowment. Or they could omit the sugar-carb fest called brain break in the evenings.</p>