In the end, the student decides to throw his scholarship application in the trash.
No such fate was to befall O'Brien--his father is a microbiologist, his mother a lawyer--although at 17 he didn't know where he was headed for college.
"I'll take the best one that picks me," O'Brien said then.
Harvard picked O'Brien, and he matriculated in 1981.
It did not take O'Brien long to find the Lampoon's 44 Bow St. castle.
He landed a spot in the organization in the first semester of his first year--a considerable feat.
Even more impressively, O'Brien was elected president of the publication as a sophomore.
Reiss recalls working in New York and hearing "through the grapevine" that the Lampoon had elected a sophomore president. For as long as anyone could remember, the position had always been held by a junior.
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