Kate Spade bag who cuts you in line in the dining hall

(Beat to a frothy paste and smear.)

Being a stranger to rejection, I rationalized, justified and poo-poohed to anyone who would listen. “Crimson Key discriminates.” “You can’t be a prefect unless you’re friends with people on the steering committee.” “I’m not pretentious enough for the Signet. I don’t own any smoking jackets or sweater vests.” But the more I seethed, carped and whined, the more that gnawing, paralyzing tightness began to sink into my stomach. I heard the voice that drives many a Harvard student, the voice that kicks you when you’re down: “You’re not good enough.”

It’s no secret why Harvard gets off on rejection. If that critic drives so many people here, pushing them to achieve, to get the highest grades, to be special, then it only makes sense that once we find ourselves in a position of “power” in the University, we take full advantage of the opportunity to tell someone else, “You’re not good enough.”

In this light, the accusations of grade inflation by the faculty seem especially befuddling. If professors and TFs go out of their way to pat us on the back with higher marks, then Harvard would seem to be a place that works to assuage the inner critic, to bolster our fragile egos.

But why then do we students take it upon ourselves to dump on each other? Life is already full of so many slammed doors, unexpected stumbles, crises of faith. We all made it to the top of the mountain together. There’s no need to push people off, or to set up a VIP area. Then again, the temptation to exclude and reject is remarkably powerful. I remember getting a whiff of righteousness and superiority earlier this year when I had to choose the next arts executives for this newspaper. Suddenly, it became so easy to accept my role as an arbitrator of worthiness—to judge people, to classify them. This person goes in the good pile, these 10 people go in the reject pile.