Guess what city has sent the most blogreaders to this blog in the last two weeks?

If you guessed Cambridge, Massachusetts, you would be correct. For the unwashed, Cambridge is home to Hah-vad, the ivy league of ivy leagues.

This blog is nothing if not confessional, so I might as well slip in another one. I went to Harvard Summer School one year, one hot Mass sticky mess of a summer.

I took a science class, out of Science Center C. The rumor we were told is that the building was supposedly paid for by the Polaroid folks and that it resembled a camera. Turns out that was an urban myth:

The Harvard University Science Center is the major teaching venue on Harvard University campus for undergraduate science and mathematics.

The Science Center was designed by Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, then dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and built in 1973.

Despite popular rumors, the building was not constructed to resemble old incarnations of the Polaroid camera, though its construction was financed by Edwin Land, Class of 1930, who invented the camera.

My experience with Harvard was a positive one. I don’t lay claim to the school, other than my attendance at one of its summer programs. What I noticed from Harvard is that the students were smart and driven. No surprise there. Berkeley too had the smarties, but also had a good many slackers. I did not, in my limited time there, run into slackers at Harvard.

Of course, there were students from other schools. I seem to remember University of Pennsylvania and maybe Dartmouth.

But Harvard students were also selfish. Perhaps since this was a Pre-med class I was taking, complete with a lab. And maybe self-focused was a way to get ahead? Or was it me?

It very much is different from my experience in the Navy where selfishness is a way to not get ahead. Where each of us has a specific task for the mission. You meet Sailors and Officers who are only out for themselves, but they are so transparent, it is ridiculous.

As for grading, it is difficult to get a bad grade at Harvard. I did D work. As in, at Cal, I would’ve been given a D. But Harvard gifted me a B. I got the transcript to prove it. Grade inflation: it’s not only pumping your flat bike tire hillside.

My question: Is my blog being scrutinized as part of a class? When I run a daily report from site analytics, I see harvard.edu in the IP addresses. But no comments from you all? Or is it possible there is a search engine run out of Harvard like Mountain View’s Google?

I will end with this thought: I am not a Harvard man. And even though I graduated from Berkeley, I don’t really consider myself a Cal man either.

But I am Navy. Through and through. The teamwork and calibre of folk I have met in the seafaring service is second to none. No offense to either of the first two institutions. I just am blessed with the job of a lifetime.