{"id":33895,"date":"2025-12-31T09:10:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=33895"},"modified":"2026-03-10T13:27:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T17:27:32","slug":"harvard-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/31\/harvard-and-me\/","title":{"rendered":"HARVARD AND ME"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nWhen I came home to Cleveland after college, I hung out at Case Western Reserve University. I wanted to stay in the college bubble. I didn&#8217;t like the alternative: the real world. I was helping my dad in the real estate business, and that was too real.<\/p>\n<p>I met a medical illustrator at a Case party. When I told her,\u00a0 \u201cI manage apartment buildings,\u201d she walked away. I had a harmonica in my pocket. She just didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<p>A friend whispered to me, \u201cIt\u2019s not in her experience &#8212; apartment building management.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A woman asked me, \u201cAre you in OB?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, I\u2019m not in medical school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOrganizational behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not in that either.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At Case, you were either a doctor, nutritionist, organizational behaviorist, or medical student. I ran into another medical illustrator. Nothing happened.<\/p>\n<p>An OB grad\u200b student, Marcy, talked to me. She was doing her Ph.D. thesis on \u201cthe event of play in a closed group.&#8221; She had just graduated from Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo many Harvard people here!\u201d a man called out to Marcy. Three Harvard people, to be exact: 1.) The host,\u00a0 2). Marcy, 3.) and\u00a0 a Harvard grad on his way to Washington to become a lobbyist. All these Harvard people were on their way somewhere.<\/p>\n<p>I was on my way to Lakewood. People called me up about low-water pressure, mice and clanging radiators. We had a tenant with no kitchen sink for two weeks because he ripped out the sink trying to install a butcher-block countertop. He wanted to charge us for dining out. Another\u00a0 tenant lost his hot water for three days; I don&#8217;t remember why. I wrote him a Japanese-style apology. The tenant deducted a significant sum from his rent. I couldn\u2019t blame him. A tenant saw a mouse and asked for a hotel room. That bugged me; mice are good people..<\/p>\n<p>I recently googled the Harvard woman, Marcy. She\u2019s a professor emerita at a university in Massachusetts (not Harvard). I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll contact her.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I should. I still have the harmonica.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_33913\" style=\"width: 251px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33913\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-33913\" src=\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/screw-up-241x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"241\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/screw-up-241x300.jpg 241w, http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/screw-up.jpg 482w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 241px) 100vw, 241px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-33913\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screw up<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; When I came home to Cleveland after college, I hung out at Case Western Reserve University. I wanted to stay in the college bubble. I didn&#8217;t like the alternative: the real world. I was helping my dad in the real estate business, and that was too real. I met a medical illustrator at a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33895"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33917,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33895\/revisions\/33917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}