It's just been announced that Malia Obama will attend Harvard University in the fall of 2017 — taking a so-called "gap year" after she graduates from her exclusive Washington D.C. high school next month.
As a proud Harvard graduate myself, I'm a big fan of this decision. Both of them. By waiting to enroll until after her father is out of the White House, she'll draw less attention to herself in Cambridge. Oh sure, she'll still probably have to have Secret Service protection while pushing her plastic tray through the dinner line at the Freshman Union; but at least Wolf Blitzer will be too busy covering the new president to insist on coming along with Barack and Michelle on Parents Day.
Meanwhile, going to Harvard not only means she’ll enjoy a top-notch education and a wide range of new experiences (I once was emergency-drafted into being the women’s track team javelin thrower for exactly one meet — it “traveled” 38 feet, mostly backwards — because my roommate was the team captain and the girl who usually did it refused to miss an important chem lab session). She’ll also be surrounded by so many other people who are celebrity offspring or famous in their own right (Caroline Kennedy and a kid of one of TV’s “Addams Family” both were in my class), she’ll pretty much fade into the woodwork.
Take it from me, Malia. I was at Harvard for four years and absolutely nobody knew who I was!
Seriously, though, she’ll love it there. History surrounds you everywhere you walk on the 380-year-old campus. Boston is just eight minutes away on the creaky old subway system affectionately dubbed the “T.” Most important, there’s a certain “we’re all in this together” trench warfare mentality that develops during freshman week when the perennial rumor goes around that a couple of people got let in by mistake and everyone starts trying to figure out who they are (spoiler alert, Malia: It’s not you).
Maybe that’s what led a certain Harvard undergrad to create something called “Thefacebook” in his dorm room. We won’t get into all the fingerpointing that later erupted over other Harvard students’ possible involvement in the birth of Facebook — suffice to say, that undergrad, Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out during his sophomore year of 2004 and never looked back.
Nor is Zuckerberg the only famous Harvard dropout. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, actor Matt Damon, poet Robert Frost, singer Bonnie Raitt — the one thing all these super successful people have in common is not sticking around long enough to graduate.
Indeed, I’ve often thought it’s my Harvard diploma that’s been holding me back in life.
So while I'd never recommend you consider dropping out, Malia (not while your dad still has the power to make the IRS audit me, anyway), I have a favor to ask: When you do finally arrive on campus to register, please have them to destroy my graduation records at the same time.
It won’t make me the next Zuckerberg. But the next time I have to throw a javelin, I’d like to crack 40 feet.
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