Hacking Harvard

by Robin Wasserman

  And, most of all, I didn't expect that.

  High school had always felt like a life sentence--and deep down, who ever expects parole?

  Max made his fortune at XemonCo. His cut of the bet paid his rent for six months--then came the IPO, and payday. Six months later, the stock crashed and he'd lost everything all over again. But he hopped to another company, then another, racking up debts and the occasional windfall along the way, always breaking even and never giving up. Some weeks, he slept on Eric's couch and scarfed ramen noodles; others, he splurged for a room at the Ritz- Carlton and treated everyone to champagne. And somewhere in there, he found time to attend night classes at BU. When he finally earned his degree, his father--without warning or explanation-- framed the certificate and hung it on the wall of achievement, right next to the letter from Bill Gates proposing acquisition of Max's latest creation.

  Schwarz graduated from Harvard a few days after his eighteenth birthday and turned down a promising academic career to become

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  the first-ever in-house mathematician at Playboy Enterprises, using his prodigious skills and encyclopedic knowledge of the Playboy empire to devise a corporate growth strategy that doubled the stock value in under nine months. Although he insists that the messy real-world complications of applied math are, in the end, more satisfying than the abstract beauty of his old topological proofs, he hasn't turned his back on the ivory tower completely. His most recent article on cellular homology appeared in the June issue of the Glasgow Mathematical Journal, with no indication that he'd written the paper while lying on a raft in the Playboy Mansion's grotto, pretending to get mad when the Bunnies splashed him. Stephanie dumped him about two months after their first kiss, claiming--after he finally got up the nerve to quit their ballroom dance class--that he never let her get her way. She went back to her endless stream of prep school jocks.

  Schwarz got over it.

  Eric never managed to design a cheap computer for the third world, though he's still working on it, at least in his spare time. As far as I know, he hasn't made much progress on the Batman thing, either.

  He became a legend at MIT, the birthplace of the hack, breaking down every system he could find until the day he was approached by Sphinx Systems, a secretive, well-endowed security company willing to pay big bucks for his expertise. They wanted someone who could think like a hacker--or, more precisely, outthink the hackers and protect the status quo. The old Eric, naive, idealistic, high school Eric, would have turned them down flat. The new one was tired of never having enough money for a second slice of pizza. He bought his first suit and took the job.

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  He goes to Greenpeace rallies on the weekend and donates a chunk of every paycheck to Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and the ACLU--but he's still convinced he sold out to the Man.

  Bernard Salazar went first to Tufts, then to Wall Street, then to prison. He's currently serving a seven-year term for insider trading. It's a minimum-security prison--and, in case he gets lonely, his recently re-incarcerated father lives right down the hall in cell block D.

  The Bongo Bums took their show on the road, abandoning Cambridge for sunny So-Cal, where they spent a couple years coasting through Cal Tech before ditching both hacking and higher education in order to pursue their screenwriting dreams. Ash now works the checkout counter at Click Clack Chicken; Gerald finally grew a mustache.

  Samuel Atherton III, on the other hand, migrated slightly farther north, courtesy of his wife, who, upon discovering his affair, laid down the ultimatum: Harvard or me. Too busy groveling to conduct much of a job search, he took the first position he could find, guidance counselor at the fourth-largest vocational school in Juneau, Alaska.

  Clay graduated from Harvard--just barely--without anyone ever finding out his secret. Midway through freshman year, he found his way to the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies-- Harvard's code name for art. With his elaborate tattoos, black fingernails, ratty T-shirts, and monochromic canvases, he blended nicely, a poseur amongst poseurs. He and his fellow students made a wordless bargain: Clay wouldn't point out that their trust-funded punk posturing disappeared whenever they went home for the holidays, while

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  they wouldn't ask him pesky questions about the trash he called art.

  By senior year, the masks had hardened into reality. Several of the sculptors became regulars at the Yankee Doodle, and, with Clay's help, the painters learned how to pierce their own eyebrows and carve their own tattoos. In return, they taught him about post-post- modern analysis, abstract textuality, and how to survive on a diet of espresso and gallery-opening hors d'ouevres. He sold his first painting, a burned down joint pasted to the center of a white canvas, for ten thousand dollars.

  It was called Blunt.

  As for me?

  I was right. I was convinced that where I went to college would determine everything that came later--and it pretty much did. Just not the way I thought.

  If I hadn't gone to Brown, I wouldn't have met my roommate, a nationally ranked Scrabble player who's almost as smart as Schwarz and who became the first best friend I'd had since sixth grade. I wouldn't have developed a crush on my econ professor and ended up majoring in economics--first for him, then for me--and eventually landed on Wall Street, spearheading my firm's acquisition of Bernard's old company, once he'd driven it into the ground. They call me the Blondish Barracuda.

  I wouldn't have rowed intramural crew or learned Swedish just for fun or gotten a concussion in the sumo wrestling booth at Spring Weekend. I might still have taken a class in Enlightenment philosophy, but at some other school, I wouldn't have befriended my study partner, a guy who dropped out of school the next year

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  when he sold a pilot to Comedy Central and brought me as his date to the Emmys. If I'd gone to Harvard and stayed in Boston, I might not have broken up with Etic--or I might not have gotten back together with him a month later, then broken up, then gotten back together, etc., etc., until I'd maxed out my credit card on bus tickets, gone over my cell phone's minute allotment by at least nine hours a month, and eventually thrown up my hands and figured that, since I couldn't get him out of my system and he couldn't get me out of his, we might be stuck with each other for good.

  Though the jury's still out on that one.

  I'm not saying things would have been different if I'd gone to Harvard. I'm saying everything would have been different. Maybe worse--maybe better. I'll never know.

  And I don't care.

  This isn't meant to be a cautionary tale, or a manifesto, or a nostalgia trip. I'm not trying to show off or to redeem myself; I have nothing to brag about, and I think I've apologized enough.

  This isn't for them, the guys, some kind of reminder of the rebellious youth they've left behind, even though it's all a little sad, the way Max cancelled his eBay account and Eric wears a tie to work every day. When Schwarz got his first pair of contact lenses, I almost cried.

  It's not for Clay, who didn't deserve Harvard any more than he deserved everything that came before it, but who, after several years of hard work and almost no arrests, doesn't deserve exposure. Which is why "Clay Porter" is not his real name--because after everything, he deserves a break.

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  This isn't even for bernard, who's only gotten slimier with age, but who has suffered enough.

  This isn't for the gatekeepers, who mean well and already know their system is broken. And it isn't for you, because you could have figured that out without my help.

  This is for me.

  Because I still follow the rules; because my bookshelf is still stuffed with how-to manuals and the idiot's guide to everything. Because I'm still afraid, I'm still stressed, and I'm still determined to be number one at almost any cost--and because that almost is easy to forget. This is how I remember the one time things ran off the track--off the cliff-- and left me stranded, without a guidebook, without a manual, without a clue.

 
I said I have no regrets. That was another lie, my last. Because I do have one regret: I regret that this story wasn't mine to tell.

  You can be sure the next one will be.

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  (Or, Don't Try This at Home)

  1. Don't think this novel is suggesting you should try to hack Harvard--or any other college. In fact, you most definitely should not, as it would be both wrong and illegal. It would also be somewhat dumb.

  2. If you are somewhat dumb, and thus decide to ignore #1, don't think you can use this novel as your guide. It is fiction, after all, and is in no way a primer on the actual admissions process.

  3. Whatever the flaws of the admissions system, admissions officers are not to blame. They're good people with a tough job. And I'm not just saying that because some of my best friends are admissions officers. It's also true.

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  Special thanks to Michelle Nagler, Bethany Buck, Michael del Rosaiio, Caroline Abbey, Sam Shah, Emily Grossi, David Roher, Natalie Roher, Brandon McGlynn, Barbara and Michael Wasserman, and, for all the inspiration and entertainment they've provided over the years, the former residents of Grays West 46, 36, 26, and Stoughton 19.

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  Robin Wasserman has always harbored a certain nostalgia for the college applications process. . . . That is, until she began writing this book and remembered what it was really like. She now realizes she would rather have her wisdom teeth removed--without anesthesia-- than go through it all again. Which is to say: She feels your pain.

  Having survived high school, college admissions, and college itself (which proved almost worth all the trouble), she now lives and writes in New York City. You can learn more about her own admissions tribulations and college capers at www.robinwasserman.com.