Jeremy's Weblog

I recently graduated from Harvard Law School. This is my weblog. It tries to be funny. E-mail me if you like it. For an index of what's lurking in the archives, sorted by category, click here.

Monday, June 13, 2005

One of the Harvard class marshals with a blog responds to the part in my commencement post where I talked about how they gave some speeches about giving money to Harvard. She writes:

I understand this reaction, that's why it sucks to be the chick who gives the speech about giving money, you get no respect. And I myself am more likely to give money to a private scholar to get students into Harvard as opposed to giving money to Harvard directly.

But I find it fustrating how much complaining Ivy League students do about what they are forced to do. I'm not talking about this one blog, I'm talking about law school students in general. We have a lot and maybe we shouldn't give to Harvard, but we should give. And maybe we hated meeting the pro bono requirement because it took us away from our dream of hovering over our money like Scrooge, but that 40 hours you spent in taxhelp being bored may really have affected someone's life.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side, but it seems to me that a lot of people don't even take one moment to realize that some people don't have any grass at all and we are lucky to have something. I had problems with my educational experience, I complained and will continue to do so, but I have been grateful for this opportunity since day one. Harvard was far from perfect, but it gave me more opportunities than I had ever known before.

Um, I don't disagree with her. Harvard's given everyone lots of opportunities, and we should be grateful and we're lucky and of course we're incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to be students. That said, we did give them $150K already. And we're barely out the door. And Harvard isn't actually in that much need. I don't think it's contradictory to say that I had a great educational experience, and feel very lucky and extraordinarily fortunate, and also not write them a check for any more money. I don't think the pro bono requirement was a terrible thing we were forced to do. I don't think Harvard forces us to do very much at all. I think we should give money to charity if we can afford to. I don't know if I think Harvard is the most needy charity out there. I didn't mean it to come off as a comment about the speeches themselves, incidentally, or the speakers. The speeches were fine, and I understand why they have someone making them. We absolutely should feel a duty to help those less fortunate than us. Didn't mean for it to sound differently.