<p>Based on a different premise, but this video illustrates the real chops to say where you went to school. </p>
<p>It must have been posted here before, but the first minute and half is a funny no excuses mantra of where she went to school. The embarrassed Harvard student could learn a couple things here. </p>
<p><a href=“The Ivy League Hustle (I Went to Princeton, ■■■■■) - YouTube”>The Ivy League Hustle (I Went to Princeton, ■■■■■) - YouTube;
<p>I liked that video. I wonder what’s happened to the young woman who made it. It seemed to me that she had some talent. The guy at the beginning did a good job of playing his part, but apparently he was actually from Cornell rather than Penn. </p>
<h1>20</h1>
<p>So funny!</p>
<h1>19 - lol</h1>
<p>This does get regional. Some folks in my new rural community haven’t heard of Yale, and haven’t even watched Gilmore Girls. They feel sorry for me that my kids live so far away since theirs usually build homes on some family land when they decide to fly the nest. It is a wonderful way to live.</p>
<p>My bragging experience is a little different, since many in my formerly NE community almost refused to believe where my kids were attending college. We had sort of a reputation in town: the endlessly harried and superhumanly patient 
mom with those really wild sons who couldn’t be controlled. Nothing good could possibly come from such a situation. When the cashier at our small grocery and the owner of the dry cleaners expressed disbelief, it didn’t really bother me, but when our very wise and long term pediatrician asked me point blank, “Can you believe how your kids turned out?” I was a bit aghast. It never had occurred to me they weren’t going to turn out just fine in the end. And it certainly hadn’t occurred to me the pediatrician didn’t get that. When I realized our story might have the potential to be an inspiration for a generation or so of parents with busy and quirky kids in that community, I just started stating the schools very matter-of -factly and acting completely puzzled when anyone expressed surprise. </p>
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<p>I have no idea what these places are but from looking at wikipedia, they seem like the North East equivalent of saying you’re from Grosse Pointe (which, since you’re from the North east, probably wouldn’t have heard of - rich area next to Detroit). </p>
<p>Anyone from Grosse Pointe? Do you have a problem saying you’re from Grosse Pointe?</p>
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<p>He was phenomenal. I deal with the 50 - 60 year-old version of that guy all the time. And they still think that way, even after 30 years out of school. But they do move mountains, so it is not too far off. </p>
<p>Vladenschlutte: I just say I’m from Bloomfield Hills. ;)</p>
<p>Love the tube video, awcntdb.</p>
<p>I told this story on another thread. One of my oldest friends is a rather deliberately frumpy midwest SAHM who talks too much, usually in non sequiturs and basically doesn’t make much of a first impression. We have a whole lot in common. Some years back, sitting in the stands watching a child’s athletic event, she chatted with a mom she’d known casually for years through this type activity and learned her eldest son had just finished law school and was practicing in New Haven. My friend, powering up her helicopter, suggested the son call her daughter, also living in New Haven. The other mom said, “John is only interested in smart women.” My friend replied, “She’s in graduate school at Yale. Her undergrad degree is from HYP. I don’t think that is going to be a problem.” They got married a year ago. When my friend told me the story, she wasn’t the least bit insulted the other mom didn’t think she was “smart” but she couldn’t believe that woman didn’t know how “smart” her daughter was. (She has never even mentioned to me that John didn’t go to ANY HYPs. I heard that elsewhere) However, the two moms are great friends now and planned a wedding together with absolutely zero drama, which seems to me more and more of a real accomplishment, maybe more so even than getting into Harvard.</p>
<p>Love that video!</p>
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<p>Or sell somebody else’s mountain and keep the proceeds. </p>
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<p>To be fair, you cannot sell someone’s mountain unless they cannot afford to take care of it themselves. </p>
<p>Shareholders who invest have a right to be paid back, as they are the true owners of the company, not the person who started it. If a company cannot meet its payments and obligations to shareholders, they have a right to sell it. It is a contract after all, not a charity agreement.</p>
<p>it will be interesting to read the different responses to the video… I was kind of focused on the “brave shamans of our generation” ; )</p>
<p>The only problem is labeling the thing as “H-bomb” as though saying you went to Harvard has some huge effect. It doesn’t. The label is stupid. People don’t fall over and faint. Our society has fallen in love with over-labeling significance. I date it back to “superstar” and the cheapening of the word “star” after decades of use. That led to all sorts of ridiculous hyperbole, including super duper star. That was also the era when sports players started caring so much about their nicknames and styling their personal celebration dance.</p>
<p>I went to Yale. Because I live in Boston and subjects like pizza or museums come up, I’ll mention I lived in New Haven, if only because I can describe the places accurately and can direct them to Modern Apizza or the BAC. I don’t say I went to Yale because that’s not the point. Sometimes people are curious, so I tell them. </p>
<p>As an aside, I’ve had people go through this charade and sometimes, if I like them, I’ll say something like, “Really? You don’t seem smart enough.” If that gets a comeback or a laugh, we’re good.</p>
<p>When I started grad school at the University of Illinois at Chicago (it was still called Chicago Circle back then) there was still a heavy blue-collar feeling to the place. Telling my classmates I’d gone to Vassar really irritated quite a few people, so I started choosing whom I’d share that with a little more carefully.</p>
<p>Where I live now, almost no one’s heard of Vassar, so it’s not a big deal.</p>
<p>This sounds like false humility or subtle snobbery to me, as in “I dare not tell you where I went to school because you might be too impressed or intimidated, and I really want you to know I’m part of the hoi polloi, just like you.” Of course, my thinking may be colored by the fact that I once had a colleague who told me he’d graduated from “a little school in Cambridge.” People who are genuinely embarrassed about a school’s reputation don’t go there.</p>
<p>I wonder if people who say they went to school at Cambridge are asked, Harvard or MIT?</p>
<p>Or if they say Oxford, do they get Ol’ Miss? How 'bout the Bama game!</p>
<p>Yeah, it all sounds kinda silly. How about:</p>
<p>Where does your little Johnny go to to school? >> He is at Harvard</p>
<p>Wow Johnny must be smart! >> yes, at least he’s not stupid and he worked hard</p>
<p>Harvard must be really expensive though? >> it’s OK, they make sure every student gets enough financial support</p>
<p>My husband is a CEO in an industry where many successful business owners have little formal education. Many didn’t go to college, some didn’t even finish HS. When he first started at the company he had to fight the assumption that because he has a Harvard MBA he must be a snob, or at least an education snob. After some time went by and people got to know him he had more people than he could count say some version of, “When we heard you were a Harvard guy we figured you would be a real *****, but you’re actually a regular guy.”</p>
<p>I am reminded of the classic line from The West Wing: “If you don’t like what they’re asking, don’t accept the premise of the question.”</p>
<p>The failure of both the straight and the evasive answers is that they both accept the premise.</p>
<p>Smile, and enthusiastically answer the question you would have preferred to be asked. It’s far more diplomatic than the implicit false humility of the evasive answer.</p>
<p>@Massmomm, re post #34, I think it depends on what you are surrounded by. Mentioning your school name can build an invisible wall, or set expectations, or be seen as “bragging,” without the benefit of overt feedback to allow you to allay it. It took me many years to “own” my school even enough to wear a sweatshirt. I finally felt like “it’s a fact, and I should be able to wear my alma mater stuff without feeling self-conscious.” I did not even wear my brass rat (school ring) for many years as I did not want to seem ostentatious. And MIT has a history/tradition of self-effacement, or rakish off-handedness, or what have you, such as students calling it “a small tech school down the river from Harvard,” or “Cambridge Tool & Die,” so you might run into that a lot- it is not original; rather traditional. I am just glad I did not go to Princeton- I look terrible in orange!</p>
<p>FWIW, it is also hard to write down “SB”, or “SM” for degree. If you do, those who are unfamiliar will think you made an error and it should be BS or MS; If you don’t, those who know may question why you wrote BS or MS- did you REALLY graduate from Harvard, or MIT? All first-world problems, to be sure.</p>