Me And Stanford

When I was a child I was a purely lousy student. Some kids will get an 80% on some exam and proclaim they stunk-up the test. I rarely got anything as good as an 80%. When I stunk-up a test I’d get something like a 26%. When I was in the 9th grade I had to take Algebra. The course mystified me from the first day of class. My grades were so horrific that my mother hired a private tutor. At the end of the first session the tutor wrote a note to my mother stating that I “lacked sufficient academic aptitude” to warrant the tutor’s services. As I dejectedly pronounced to my crestfallen mother, “Geez Mom, the tutor flunked me!“

Anyway, I’ve always been envious of those who are gifted scholastically. Consequently, when a friend of mine stated in her Facebook bio that she had attended Cornell University, I had to do something about it.

I’ve always liked the idea of going to Stanford. I think the fact that it’s on the West Coast has something to do with it. I’ve always thought of the Left Coast as kind of cool and hip. Heck, Hollywood is on the West Coast. But more importantly, Stanford is considered the “Harvard of the West”. In other words, the school has a great reputation. So, naturally, I put in my Facebook profile that I attended Stanford. Of course that’s not close to being the truth. I don’t even know exactly where Stanford is on a map. But a Facebook profile cannot determine what is a lie and what isn’t.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I decided I’d go to the Stanford website. I think I wanted to look at some photos of the campus that I had allegedly attended. Among other things, I found an official Facebook page that published the “Stanford Stories” of past and present students, stories written by the students themselves. I read two of the entrees and they were about young graduates who had always dreamed of going to Stanford, and how all their hopes and desires had ultimately been realized.

Well of course I was never a student, nevertheless I figured Stanford would enjoy my story, such as it is. After all, I could write a highly flattering story about how I too had wanted to be a Stanford student.

So I carefully composed the account of how I was not sufficiently blessed academically to go to Stanford, but if I were, I would have done anything to go to Stanford. “High praise considering I am an ordinary guy living in far-off Columbus, Ohio“, I proclaimed. I concluded my narrative by saying that I so admired their school that on my Facebook bio I had declared myself to be an “unofficial” alumni of Stanford University.

The next day I went back to the website to see if anyone had written a comment in response to my story. Well, not only was there no comment, but my story was nowhere to be found. For a moment I was somewhat surprised, and even kind of annoyed. After all, I had in essence said that a guy in a distant part of the country, a person not even affiliated with the school, held their university in the highest regard.

But when I sat back and thought about it for a few minutes, my story’s deletion really did make sense. In fact, I realized that I shouldn't have expected anything else. I mean, I posted a story on the Facebook page of an elite university, me, a guy who may have longed for higher learning, but was, in reality, failed by his own tutor. This was simply a case of one more school flunking me.

Fortunately, my Facebook bio doesn't care.