On Real Life

We often separate “Harvard” and “real life.” It makes sense, perhaps, to divorce the two. Real life is a functionally useful term for a place with mortgages and paychecks and uncomfortable family gatherings, a place without three prepared meals a day, without friends who wax philosophical at a dorm party at 2 a.m. But this separation also implicitly allows us to neglect the uneven texture of human experience.