More than fifty years have passed since my youth, and it comes to mind that this means almost everyone I then knew then as an adult or as my superior is now almost certainly dead.  That is of course a chilling thought, and I guess a sad one, but it is also a little liberating: I can write honestly of those days.  Of course that I can write honestly doesn't mean I necessarily will -- I have to watch myself closely here since I have my share of false memories, mainly places where I have distorted events to protect others and aggrandize myself, or at least make my self not look quite so bad.

I wasn't in Harvard more than six months before I fully realized I was never going to graduate.  This was because of their foreign language requirement -- an armchair rule made by bureaucratic types who thought such a rule was a "good" thing for encouraging the students to study languages.  What it did to me, as happens often enough with rules, was close the door to me, since I wasn't in French more than half a year and I knew I would never pass the requirement.

I think this is an example of the Chinese saying of, "Pass a law, make a criminal," although in this case of course not a law and not a criminal, just a rule and a failure.

Of course I am not free of blame here, but I can remember spending hours studying the lesson (mainly vocabulary lists) and then having the graduate student over the class humiliate me with the accusation I hadn't even cracked a book.  So I read several books on how to remember things and tried, but didn't succeed.  I am intelligent and remember things well, but there are cracks and the biggest one is remembering things like vocabulary words or numbers or people's names.  (Later in my career I use to keep a list of my clients organized by who they worked for -- which I had no trouble remembering -- so that by the time they got from the receptionist's desk to my desk I could have looked up their name).

One other example: even today after years and years I still am never quite sure of my Social Security number, and make sure to have it at hand whenever I call a bank or broker or someone who is likely to ask for it.

Anyway I realized I would not graduate.  Of course at the time I did not see this as the disaster it in fact would turn out to be, as I thought nevertheless I would get a Harvard education in other ways, as I would not have any trouble staying there the full four years.  And, I had another card available -- "the Truth."

When I was younger my mom had come for a short time under the influence of Jehovah's Witnesses.  I think my dad's natural skepticism had influenced her away, along with her own rational intelligence, but I was unlucky enough to have been caught when I was indoctrinable (younger).   I had learned one thing -- they were, "the Truth."  I believed this.  I was not rational but beliefs rarely are, or at least don't need to be.  Beliefs are things you believe without conscious awareness -- they are just there -- furniture your mind sits on and uses and assumes without analysis or even notice.

So shortly after arrival at Cambridge I found the local congregation and began attending meetings and going to Bible studies and so on.

Since I then thought that the end of the world (Armageddon) was soon to come, the degree from Harvard did not seem so valuable.  It seemed to me I could learn what Harvard had to offer in things like history and so on and dispense with worrying about the credential that would be of no meaning in the New World that was to come.

Juvenile (sophomoric) stupidity and youthful indoctrination.  Sheesh!