Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/08/31
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 08:11 PM 8/31/2006, Frank Filippone wrote: >Don, I must agree that you have posted all GOOD >reasons to send your kid to Harvard..... Mine >may not have been good reasons, but >to launch a kid into a career, he needs an >edge. Name brand schools provide that >edge. The fact that he gets a good education, >well, he can get a good education at Podunk U as >well..... It is what the kid does with the challenges that count. Frank I was graduated from Washington & Lee University. While there, I met one future US Senator, a future US Representative, and a bunch of future judges, along with my best friend of that time, now the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Engineering. None of these connections have ever done me a bit of good, though that is mainly due to my own failure to play them for any benefit. One reason to attend a top-ranked school is to make contacts which you can then use to advance your career. (I later attended Yale Graduate School in Classical Languages where, out of my nine classmates, two went on to become Classics Professors in tenure-track positions. I then went to William & May Law School, where three classmates became Commonwealth's Attorneys and one a mover-and-shaker in the Virginia House of Delegates. I did better in my attendance at the Defense Information School at Uncle Ben's Rest Home: three of my classmates ended up as Editors-in-Chief or whatever the title might have been for smaller newspapers and two ended up as senior flacks for Fortune 500 companies.) I haven't much ability to use these contacts other than to urge things such as adoption of the Fair Tax, but, still, I have them. Others more skilled than I in the art of begging for jobs could have done far better than I did at padding their own next, and many have done so. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!