Harvard Made Easy

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EDUCATION
HARVARD MADE EASY
Avete sempre sognato una laurea a Harvard ma non vi sentite all’altezza,
o siete fuori età? Potete sempre consolarvi visitando il campus e parlando
con quelli che ce l’hanno fatta. E uscire con un perfetto accento bostoniano!
Ecco un assaggio dell’Hahvahd Tour. By Kathleen Becker
Photos by Kathleen Becker, Hahvahd Tour/Seven Hills Communications, Visit Boston
UPPER INTERMEDIATE
B2
WGLOSSARY
1 on course for life:
sulla strada per
diventare
2 caters to: è
indirizzato a
3lies: bugie
4 do rub: strofinate
5 spans: abbraccia,
spazia
6run: gestito
7sweatshirt: felpa
8buzzword: parola
d’ordine, slogan
9ancestors: antenati
10 whiz kid: ragazzo
prodigio
24 thirty
30
twenty-four
F
ounded in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher education
in the United States. It is also the
richest, with a fortune of over $37 billion. Only about 5 per cent of applicants
get in. Those who do are on course for
life 1 among the country’s elite. But if you
don’t, take comfort: Warren Buffett, one
of the world’s richest men, didn’t get in
either. Ordinary mortals can still take a
tour of the main campus. The Hahvahd
Tour, for example, caters to2 both prospective students and general tourists,
and it’s a great way to explore the alma
mater of John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama and Natalie Portman.
HARVARD YARD
Sports and athletics are an important
part of student life. Our guide Jake, a
psychology student, also plays for the
college football team. Jake is enthusiastic, authentic, full of jokes and college
stories. The tour explores Harvard Yard,
(‘Haahvahd Yaaad’) where crowds surround a large bronze figure of a seated
man. The inscription on the statue says
three things: “John Harvard,” “Founder”
and “1638.” It’s also known as the statue
of the Three Lies3. Why? The person is
not John Harvard, John Harvard didn’t
found the college, and even if he did, it
wasn’t in 1638. Do rub4 the bronze foot
anyway, for good luck.
ARCHITECTURE
The eclectic architecture of the buildings in the Yard spans5 300 years and
many different styles. There is redbrick
Georgian and neo-Georgian, there is
C1 ADVANCED
SPEAKER
CHUCK ROLANDO
TRACK 13
_ INTERVIEW
COMPETING
AGAINST YOURSELF
H
arvard is one of the world’s top universities. There are various lists of
“rankings,” but usually Harvard is either
number one or number two. So what’s
it like to study there? To find out we decided to take the “Hahvahd Tour.” This
is not a misprint1 but an imitation of the
Bostonian accent. Harvard is across the
river from Boston in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is not to be confused with
Cambridge, England, home of another
leading university. The tour is led by students, and we asked one of the guides,
Sean Kinyon, whether Harvard was a very
competitive place:
“Hahvahd” tour
guides can show
you the USA’s – and
the world’s – most
prestigious university
(opposite page).
Below: rubbing “John
Harvard’s” shoe.
SEAN KINYON
(STANDARD AMERICAN ACCENT)
I think it’s a kind of
silent competition.
Because you have all
these students who
are coming from
backgrounds where,
yes, you have to compete against
classmates2 to a certain degree3 to get
the best rank, but a lot of the kids here,
Victorian neo-Gothic, 19th century neoclassical and 1970s functionalism. If the
tour group is small, you might discover
the secret of the entrance to a neo-Romanesque campus building. Prospective
students of course want to hear what life
is like on campus. Ask what you like and
the guides will try to answer.
The tour ends in a merchandise shop
run 6 by the student association. So if we
don’t have a Harvard degree, we can at
least wear the sweatshirt7!
HARVARD TODAY: DIVERSITY
Harvard is also famous for students who
dropped out of Harvard and became
extremely successful anyway: Bill Gates,
Mark Zuckerberg – heard of them?
The big buzzword8 at Harvard, as all over
the US at the moment, is diversity. Diver-
WGLOSSARY
1misprint: refuso
2classmates:
compagni di classe
3 to a certain degree:
in una certa misura
4internships: stage
5 doing classwork to
beat me: lavorare in
classe per battermi
6résumé: curriculum
the competition doesn’t seem to be
between them and other people, it’s
between them and themselves, and
how much can they push themselves, to
get the most out of the opportunities.
Because someone who’s sitting in a
class isn’t thinking about “How is the
person next to me doing internships4
and doing classwork to beat me 5?”
Because they’re building their own
résumé6 or doing whatever it is that
they’re doing. I think someone in class
is just thinking “How can I make the
most out of my opportunities? ‘Cause
worrying about that is going to get me
a lot further than trying to create this
imaginary competition between me and
other people” ‘cause it’s not quite the
way it is in high school, I think.
sity of colour, gender, orientation, social
and ethnic background. Harvard emphasizes that much of its wealth is used
to help underprivileged students get a
Harvard education. Barack Obama was
the first African-American president of
the Harvard Law Review. On a “Hahvahd
Tour” you could have a guide from an
Old Bostonian family whose ancestors9
came over on the Mayflower, or a Chinese whiz kid10.
Also, Harvard now has its first
female president in nearly
400 years: Drew Faust.
Her priorities are the arts,
Harvard’s
international
profile, and its reputation as a space for
collaboration over
competition.
WORLD
Left: Drew Faust,
Harvard’s first female
president (in nearly
400 years of history).
i If you go...
Hahvahd Tours: www.trademarktours.
com. The guides wait outside the Harvard
Red Line subway station. The tour costs
just under $10 if booked online. It’s
free if you’ve taken a Duck Tour (www.
bostonducktours.com), a fun sightseeing
trip on an amphibian vehicle.
The Crimson campus newspaper is a good
source of information on student life.
For more information on Boston:
www.bostonusa.com, and Cambridge:
www.cambridgeusa.org.
A fantastic, stylish and central
accommodation option is the new
Youth Hostel in downtown Boston,
Chinatown: www.bostonhostel.org.
Harvard was founded
in the 17th century
(more than a century
before the United
States became an
independent nation)
and its architecture is
impressive.
A BETTER WORLD?
Harvard University: www.harvard.edu
We also talked to another guide and student, Renan Carneiro, who is from Rio de
Janeiro in Brazil. We asked him the classic job interview question: “Where do you
see yourself 10 years from now?”
EXPLAINS
RENAN CARNEIRO (BRAZILIAN ACCENT)
WGLOSSARY
7 raising awareness:
sensibilizzare
8defeat: sconfiggere
9issue: questione
32 thirty-two
I see myself in Brazil!
I see myself in Brazil
working with education,
public policies related
to education. I run
a social enterprise
there, with other friends and students
called Movimento Mapa Educação. We
have been doing a lot of cool things
in the country, in terms of like raising
awareness7 about education, organizing
public debates, and I definitely see
myself like getting very engaged of
this topic. I feel like that’s the next big
dilemma that Brazil has to embrace
and solve for the next 10 years. We
were able to defeat8 inflation, we were
able to defeat like extremely poverty,
but education is definitely the next big
issue 9, and, hopefully, my generation’s
going to be able to solve it.
Hahvahd Tour. È una presa in giro del
modo di parlare di Boston, che ha le r
praticamente mute.
Alma mater. Pur essendo un termine
latino, nel mondo anglofono è molto
usato per indicare l’università di
appartenenza, quella che si è
frequentata.
Very engaged of this topic. Molto
impegnato in questo argomento.
Anche se con la parola engaged Renan
si fa capire, la frase giusta sarebbe very
committed to this issue.
Extremely poverty. Estrema povertà.
Anche questo è un errore: la frase
giusta è extreme poverty. Si dice
invece extremely poor. Facciamo
notare gli errori di Renan Carneiro
non per pignoleria ma per far capire
agli italiani che gli errori in inglese
non sono così importanti: Renan ne
fa, ma nonostante questo è riuscito ad
essere ammesso all’università numero
uno al mondo!