Hacking Harvard

Chapter 2 Your child can contribute to her school and community by pursuing what she enjoys and sharing it with others. -- Eva Ostrum,The Thinking Parent's Guide to College Admissions The car skidded to the right, then veered left, dodging a turbo-charged flamethrower. A hail of gunfire exploded from the alleyway, and the windshield shattered into a storm of glass, but he pushed forward, the tires squealing, and he was almost safe, a smooth getaway, free and clear -- when the roadside grenade blew out his tire. The front wheels jerked off the ground, and the car tumbled down an embankment, smashing and crashing its way to the bottom. There was a sickening crunch of metal. And then the car exploded into a ball of fire. Eric tossed aside the controller in disgust. It was his third try, and this time he'd lasted only three and a half minutes before getting toasted. Other than his new Wii -- which even his brain-dead sister had agreed was "more addictive than crack, not like I've tried it, because I'm not a total skeeze, but you know what I mean" -- Eric steered clear of hand-eye coordination games. He stuck to the world of digital role-play, which, as far as he was concerned, took brains, style, finesse -- and had a significantly lower humiliation factor. Besides, at least as a dragon slayer, he was doing some good in the world. Okay, maybe nothisworld, but it still had to count for something that he'd rescued six villages, 237 peasants, four maidens, an orphan, and a deposed prince from rampage, destruction, and certain death. World of Warcraft trained you to fight the good fight, so that when therealfight came to you, you'd be ready. All RoadKill 7 trained you to do, as far as Eric could tell, was pick up hookers and repeatedly drive your car off a cliff. Though he was willing to admit the possibility that he was playing it wrong. "Do you guys need a remedial tutorial on the meaning of 911?" he asked as Max grabbed the controller. "Last week it's some kind of bra emergency, and now you drag me back here for what? PlayStation crisis?" "Patience, young Jedi," Max said, leaning closer to the tiny TV in an effort to see whether the fuzzy figure approaching his car was a prostitute or a cop. "All good things come to those I deem worthy." Schwarz, who was at his desk, legs kicked up on the nineteenth-century wood, the "authentic Harvard chair" (with the gold seal to prove it) digging into his back, looked up from his notebook. "Professor Kempel is giving a lecture on homological algebra and the computability problem at five, so if this is perhaps not that important..." "It's important," Max said, eyes still fixed on the screen. Schwarz nodded, and turned back to his homework. "Okay." Eric threw himself down on the roommate's bed, which had gone unused since the first week of school, when Schwarz's roommate, one Marsh Preston, of the Upper East Side Prestons ("Maybe you've heard of us?"), had tossed his CK boxers, Paul Smith shirts, and six jars of Kiehl's moisturizers and bronzers into a Harvard athletics duffel bag and taken off for Canaday Hall, where his high school girlfriend had a single. "I could be at a rally right now," Eric said. "People Against the Encroachment of Civil Equality. PEACE." "That's not PEACE, that's PA-ECE," Max said. "And you hate rallies." "Fine." Eric sucked in a breath through gritted teeth. "So I could be home playing World of Warcraft. What's the difference? This is still a waste of time." "This is a time to cherish," Max chided him. "A time to treasure the moments of your lives with the people who truly -- " "A time to cut the bullshit," Eric said. "Why are we here?" Max hit pause. He stood up and turned to face his friends. "Why are we here? A good question. An excellent question. Whyarewe here? Are we just marking time?" "I amWasserman, Robin is the author of 'Hacking Harvard ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416936336 and ISBN 1416936335.