Fitz's Harvard Degree

[machinegun12]

Not quite sure I understand your response. But that is ok.

I'll explain it to you. There's a movie called "Good Will Hunting" starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. In that movie there's a scene at a bar where Ben Affleck's character (not sure of his name, but he's the "dumb" friend of a closet "genius" played by Damon) is hitting on a girl, and a pompous loser who goes to Harvard tries to make him look like a fool in front of said girl. At that point, Matt Damon steps in and goes on a rant to the Harverd "loser" (which is the dialogue I wrote out in previous post).I then said you remind me of that smug jerk at the bar in that movie.

 

So if you still are lost, please watch the movie, and when the bar scene comes on, the guy with the sweater tied over his shoulder and the long ponytail reminds me of you.

Edited December 22, 2010 by machinegun12

[Bills99999]

I'm a Harvard grad (class of '91, much older than Fitz), and wanted to add a couple of things on this thread.

 

First, I think some on this board are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Fitz's comments on the topic seem pretty balanced and, frankly, are consistent with the attitudes of many Harvard grads in many professions. Everyone hates the know it all Harvard a-hole, and most Harvard grads don't want to be that guy/gal. So it's pretty common for alums to simply not say much of anything about where they went to college and, if asked, to mention it and quickly move on. That doesn't mean they aren't proud of their school or are anti-intellectual or anything else. Nor do I think it's a bad reflection on our society to say that it hates a know-it-all a-hole. You can be smart or an a-hole, or smart and not an a-hole; the latter is better!

 

Second, no disrespect to my alma mater, but becoming an NFL quarterback after playing at Harvard is a much more impressive accomplishment in my book than graduating from Harvard. Harvard isn't all that tough a school. Getting in is extraordinarily difficult, but once you're there, you can skate by if you want with a "gentleman's C" (no doubt a B minus these days with grade inflation!). Excelling at something at Harvard is what's impressive because in just about every area other than sports (academics, music, the school newspaper, otehr clubs) you're playing with/competing with some of the most impressive kids of your generation. That's the best thing about Harvard--it takes people who have been really successful, and throws them in together in a way that helps everyone who wants to push themselves to heights they didn't know existed. This is the case except for most sports (crew, squash, and sometimes hockey the big exceptions), where everyone knows they are playing for the love of the game, and where the competition--both internally, and with other Ivy League schools, is far, far, far from world class. All that makes Fitz's NFL achievement to me absolutely mind bogglingly impressive. I guarantee you he was getting zero encouragement from his non-football friends at school to pursue the NFL. Even his teammates probably thought he was nuts. He was a strong Ivy League quarterback, but that's rarely gotten anyone into the NFL. So the guy has got to have a great reservoir of internal commitment and self-confidence to have even tried. I suspect those traits are part of what makes him an effective leader.

 

Although I live in Seattle now, I'm a Rochester native and have been a die-hard Bills fan since I started watching football. What a pleasure it is to see my home town and my undergraduate roots coming together. I never would have thought it possible!

 

Go Bills!

 

 

Who were dumber at Harvard, legacy admissions or Football admissions? A close relative of mine played football at a “lesser” Ivy and he said the legacies were clearly dumber

[Lurker]

Show of hands. How many TSW posters actually know / work with / have met a Harvard grad?

 

The more than a few I know all seem to follow the Fitz example...which makes this whole thread a hoot.

Bump.

 

After the mental head smack of citing "Good Will Hunting" as the definitive characterization of Harvard students, this question begs to be answered...

Edited December 22, 2010 by Lurker

[Bills99999]

Bump.

 

After the mental head smack of citing "Good Will Hunting" as the definitive characterization of Harvard students, this question begs to be answered...

 

 

No, but I have met grads from Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Penn, Dartmouth and Phoenix Online

[JPS]

I'll explain it to you. There's a movie called "Good Will Hunting" starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. In that movie there's a scene at a bar where Ben Affleck's character (not sure of his name, but he's the "dumb" friend of a closet "genius" played by Damon) is hitting on a girl, and a pompous loser who goes to Harvard tries to make him look like a fool in front of said girl. At that point, Matt Damon steps in and goes on a rant to the Harverd "loser" (which is the dialogue I wrote out in previous post).I then said you remind me of that smug jerk at the bar in that movie.

 

So if you still are lost, please watch the movie, and when the bar scene comes on, the guy with the sweater tied over his shoulder and the long ponytail reminds me of you.

The "Good Will Hunting" response was genius!. Well played. You can't come on this board and throw your brain around. If your were really smart, you'd be doing something else!

 

DO YOU LIKE APPLES?!

[allenwebb]

Who were dumber at Harvard, legacy admissions or Football admissions? A close relative of mine played football at a “lesser” Ivy and he said the legacies were clearly dumber

 

Impossible to generalize; at least 25 years ago, there were plenty of smart and not so smart people in both groups

[Guest three3]

imo what matters more than the elite degree is how it came to be. bush? a bull **** legacy. it would mean more to me if fitzpatrick went to harvard on some sort of a scholarship. if he is a legacy, !@#$ that degree. it would be just about meaningless to me if that was the case.

[Tolstoy]

The "Good Will Hunting" response was genius!. Well played. You can't come on this board and throw your brain around. If your were really smart, you'd be doing something else!

 

DO YOU LIKE APPLES?!

 

 

It is amazing to me. This guys gets praised for citing a Hollywood movie. I get lampooned for telling him to read two books on the nature of a Liberal Arts education after he suggested such an education is less than praiseworthy. I can laugh at myself and the irony of this whole situation. It really is funny, given my original point in this thread.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

Right--I get that part. As the initial poster on this one, I just want to say that what bothered me were two things:

 

(1) The claim that "what is most important" in the football locker room is that a player does not flaunt his academic achievements. He can flaunt other achievements, such as athletic achievements. He can wear his football achievements as a "badge of superiority" (this happens in every locker room), but God forbid he should seem in any way SMARTER than his mates.

 

Hmmm, I guess it makes sense to me. Context is everything. (Mis)quoting a Darryl Talley tweet, "on the football field, your job is to score points or make the other guy eat d**k." Smarts only matter if they are football smarts - in the context of a football locker room. Now if we're evaluating someone's financial advice, that's another matter.

 

(2) The implicit assumption that having gone to Harvard does make you superior! In a strange and ironic twist, Chris Brown's remark about this shows that he at least does think that having gone to Harvard makes you superior, otherwise he wouldn't have even mentioned it as even worthy of a "badge of superiority." Who really cares where Fitx went to school? Maybe its just me, but I could really care less where you got your B.A. If you studied hard and got your B.A from Canisius or UB, you get just as much respect from me.

 

Oh, I hear you. Like it or don't, Harvard does have that "smart" cultural icon status, though.

[Doc]

As a student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell, I paid less than half the tuition that the kids in the College of Arts and Sciences did for "pre med" studies. If anything, it was probably harder get into the CALS than the CAS because of the cheap tuition.

[Dan]

It is amazing to me. This guys gets praised for citing a Hollywood movie. I get lampooned for telling him to read two books on the nature of a Liberal Arts education after he suggested such an education is less than praiseworthy. I can laugh at myself and the irony of this whole situation. It really is funny, given my original point in this thread.

*slamming hand against computer screen*

 

How do you like them apples?!

[Orton's Arm]

As someone very close to completing a doctorate, I will agree with the "anti-intellectual" comment regarding the current state of mind of this country. We've lost out ability to be rational and intelligent and instead have become more ideological and irrationally emotional. We can't reason about issues or have a legit discussion on something because everyone wants to stand on some moral, normative or ideological platform and not listen to anything that doesn't fit neatly into a narrow ideology. Look at the comment above about Olbermann. Someone doens't agree with Olbermann and his ideology and instead of using some rational argument with facts about why Olbermann might be wrong, he calls his degree from Cornell "fake Ivy League." That's exactly what I mean. Cornell is an Ivy League school, so again, let's not be rational about the facts, let's try to marginalize or redefine it to suit our ideological argument. Idiot.

 

But the point Brown is making is that the degree from Harvard is irrelevant to his current occupation and Fitz is smart enough to know that. Sure it garners respect from his peers as an intellectual achievement. Fitz does not however, nor should he, stand on it and use it as the ultimate proof he's a leader, good football player, good person, good teammate, whatever. He can't use it to demand respect. He has to earned it and a great leader gets respect for who he is and what he accomplishes in the context of his job. Power-playing a Harvard degree to get people to follow you is a guaranteed way to turn people off and Fitz knows it and doesn't care about the degree.

 

The issue is the same as a first round draft pick. If you come in and act like your entitled and people must follow you because of where you were drafted, no one cares. You have to earn it. Same with a Harvard degree.

Several years back, I had the deep misfortune to have received Keith Olbermann's book as a gift. The book is called The Worst Person in the World, and 202 Strong Contenders. I began reading the book until I made it to the first obvious instance of libel, and then I stopped. In other words, I didn't make it past the prologue.

 

From the prologue:

John Gibson: . . . "I would think that if somebody is going to . . . have to answer for following the wrong religion' date=' they're not going to have to answer to me. We know who they're going to have to answer to. . . . But in the meantime, as long as they're civil and behave, we tolerate the presence of other religions around us without causing trouble, and I think most Americans are fine with that tradition."

 

That phrase "wrong religion" actually reads worse in context, doesn't it? It's the same kind of misunderstanding and perversion of faith to which we react in horror when we see it in terrorists who have twisted religion for their own purposes. Might as well have been commentators on some All-Access Al Qaeda show on Al Jazeera talking about infidels. . . .

 

[A']s any of us who've actually read the Bible know . . .

 

Note that in the above passages--both from the libelous prologue, I might add--Olbermann is claiming two things. 1) Gibson's position represents a "perversion of faith" and a "twisting of religion," implicitly for Gibson's own purposes. 2) Keith Olbermann has read the Bible. At least one of those claims is a lie.

 

The Gospel of John, 3:18, states the following "Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God."

 

Romans 3:22-25 states, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. They are now justified by grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom got put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith."

 

Romans 6:23 states, "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

 

At least according to Pauline theology, Jesus was sacrificed on the cross to redeem humanity from sin. One goes about accepting this sacrifice for oneself by believing in Jesus and accepting salvation from him. The theme of salvation through faith alone is replete throughout Paul's epistles, and it is impossible to read them without coming away with that message. Both the Gospel of John and the epistles of Paul place a very strong emphasis on the importance of faith in general, and on belief in Jesus in particular. People are free to disagree with that if they so choose. But they should not feel free to grossly misrepresent the message of the Gospel of John and of Paul's epistles in order to make false accusations against people like John Gibson. Under no circumstances whatsoever is it appropriate to use dishonest tactics to smear a political opponent. I don't care who the opponent is or what his ideology is.

 

Olbermann's idea of the worst people in the world seems to include conservative commentators, as well as just about anyone else who disagrees with him. Tom Cruise was awarded "today's worst person in the world" award, not for anything Scientology-related, but because of the following exchange. "Asked by the German tabloid Bildt if he believes in aliens, Cruise snapped at this guy too. 'Yes, of course. Are you really so arrogant as to believe we are alone in the universe?' Maybe Tom is from another planet."

 

I'll grant that Cruise's use of the word "arrogant" was a little annoying. But that hardly makes him one of the worst people in the world! As for aliens: there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observed universe. You'd think that somewhere out there, there must be aliens.

 

Olbermann is an embarrassment to himself, and to any network or news organization that affiliates itself with him.

Edited December 23, 2010 by Edwards' Arm

[Nostradamus]

Here is what Chris Brown says in a recent report about Fitz:

 

"Perhaps most important is even though Fitzpatrick comes with a Harvard pedigree, he doesn’t wear it like a badge of superiority."

 

Just curious: why is this what is "most important?" Why is it more important than any other qualities? Why isn't it ok for him to be proud of his degree?

 

What bothers me is that this country is so bloody egalitarian and anti-intellectual that we don't appreciate anyone's intellectual achievements. God forbid Fitz should let it be known that he has a Harvard degree (as if that is something he should strut around with for the rest of his life anyhow). No, he must act like a normal dummy because that is what is important. Getting along with the guys. Being one of the crowd.

 

Stupid.

 

Knowing Chris Brown a little bit, I think it was an innocuous comment. Trust me, noone would ever confuse Chris Brown with a Harvard graduate. Also, while I would agree with your general sentiment about this country and it's ever growing lack of regard for intellect as opposed to more contemporary traits, I think Brown's statement makes sense in the context of NFL football.

He doesn't make intellectualism sound like a negative trait (though he certainly doesn't sound like he's endorsing it either.) Instead, he seems to criticize the idea of intellectual arrogance, or acting like one is better than other people because they are smarter. To that end, I would agree with him that being blessed with any trait does not make one superior to anyone else, whether that's intellect or athletic ability, Specifically, in the context of NFL football, a macho culture where intellectualism is so de-prioritized, Fitzpatrick would not garner the respect of his teammates if he were to walk around and call people stupid because they do not know the works of Tolstoy or Joyce.

[alg]

As someone very close to completing a doctorate, I will agree with the "anti-intellectual" comment regarding the current state of mind of this country. We've lost out ability to be rational and intelligent and instead have become more ideological and irrationally emotional. We can't reason about issues or have a legit discussion on something because everyone wants to stand on some moral, normative or ideological platform and not listen to anything that doesn't fit neatly into a narrow ideology. Look at the comment above about Olbermann. Someone doens't agree with Olbermann and his ideology and instead of using some rational argument with facts about why Olbermann might be wrong, he calls his degree from Cornell "fake Ivy League." That's exactly what I mean. Cornell is an Ivy League school, so again, let's not be rational about the facts, let's try to marginalize or redefine it to suit our ideological argument. Idiot.

Until such time that universities offer a minor in common sense, the Olbermanns' of the world will continue to be reviled.

 

And then there is this:

 

I follow the advice of the playwright when it comes to intelligence..."Show me, don't tell me". Don't go about insipidly reminding people of how smart you are.

[Bills99999]

Impossible to generalize; at least 25 years ago, there were plenty of smart and not so smart people in both groups

 

I know for football they use the "academic index" where there are (I believe) five categories of academic achievement/ability. The team is allowed to offer admission to a certain number of players in each category called “bands”. The number in each category differs from school to school. Because H, Y and P, have the most status, they can offer admission to fewer in the lower bands. The “Lower Ivies” Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn, Brown and Cornell can offer admission to more in the lower bands

 

In general, the best players come from the lower bands because they come from a larger talent pool.

 

Do you think they also have this Academic Index system for legacy admissions, famous people and the children of famous people?

 

For example, it could work like this:

A Kennedy or Obama offspring needs a 1200 SAT and a 3.5 GPA

One of Al Gore or his roommate Tommy Lee Jones would need a 1400 and a 3.8 GPA

The Unabomber’s kids would need a 1600 and a 4.6 GPA, a great essay, give blood once a week and be class president.

Edited December 23, 2010 by Bills99999

[Tolstoy]

Of course that's your contention. You're a first year grad student. You just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison, probably. You're gonna be convinced of that til next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you're gonna be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital forming effects of military mobilization.

 

Your response: Well, as a matter of fact I won't, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social...

 

Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth? You got that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County" ,page 98, right? Yeah, I read that, too. Were you gonna plagarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend, you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're going to come up with the fact that there are 2 certainties in life. One, don't do this...and two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an f*$@!ng education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.-Will Hunting.

 

You kinda sound like the dork at the bar Tolstoy.

 

And you sound a bit like a guy who spends all his time at the bars, my friend. More books, less movies for you. It will be good for you.

[The Senator]

Show of hands. How many TSW posters actually know/work with/have met a Harvard grad?

 

The more than a few I know all seem to follow the Fitz example...which makes this whole thread a hoot.

I had a chance meeting with one at Schoellkopf Field during the Harvard-Cornell game - I was walking out of the lav and past the sinks when he smugly sneered from inside his polyester HARVARD sweatshirt, "At Hahvahd, they teach us to wash our hands after we urinate!"

 

(To which I quickly replied, "At Cornell, they teach us not to piss on our hands.")

 

.

Edited December 27, 2010 by The Senator