Most people try to be nice about not embarrassing us with questions about our SAT scores, our IQ scores, our future plans or our study habits.

But when you do something stupid, all hell breaks loose.

"What school do you go to?"

IDON'T WANT to scare any first-years worried about the worth of their Harvard education by telling a story about my summer as a waitress in Atlantic City, but it's an editorial necessity. For the whole summer, the only contact the Class of '95 has had with this venerable institution has been through the Harvard admissions office and the national media.

It's time to learn what it really means to be a Harvard student.

When I started work this summer, my co-workers didn't really know what I was doing there. None of them had ever met anyone who went to Harvard. As a group, they knew few people who had gone to college outside New Jersey.

Needless to say, they were utterly surprised when I had trouble figuring out the tax on my checks, made spelling mistakes on my orders and mixed up left and right when giving directions to the bathroom.

I got a lot of "And she goes to Harvard!"

Of course, I may be slightly less competent than the normal Harvard student, but I'm not that far off.

I tried to convince them that my shortcomings were normal academic mental blocks, symptoms of only being able to concentrate on one thing at a time. That was always the explanation we would use in my family when we would find my father sitting at his computer while the water was running out of the sink and the mail was sitting in the freezer.

And he's a professor.

ONE NIGHT, the manager of my restaurant stopped me and said "Hey, you go to Harvard, could you put together this bookshelf?" Big mistake.

This may be a fine institution, but it lacks courses in practical knowledge. Harvard is no vo-tech school.

The last time I picked up a hammer was in seventh-grade workshop. I invented split-level knock hockey because I couldn't get my plywood to stay even. If my shop teacher hadn't sent me to the library to avoid any major accidents, I might never have ended up an English major at Harvard.

I might be able to read the directions to build bookshelves in multiple languages, but I certainly couldn't put them together better than any other person with two hands. A good portion of the students here can't hook up their own computers. Even more have compact disk players that baffle them. And if you can find a student who put together his or her own futon, get them on the bus to MIT.

The point of a liberal arts education, apparently, is that we come out of this place knowing how to analyze theories. Tuning our carburators is another story altogether.

The Harvard name offers plenty of benefits. But think for a minute before you cover yourself in Harvard insignia. Think before you get too caught up in the prestige of going to one of the most elite institutions in the world.

It doesn't stop you from being a bumbling idiot.

Beth L. Pinsker '93, the assistant editorial chair of The Crimson, considers herself differently mechanical.