My eldest sister Beth is a doctor who studied at Harvard and Columbia and played basketball for Harvard. She set the athletic and academic standard for the rest of us to follow.
So, I went to Harvard and I got exposed to American work habits. I didn't even realise for a while that I was behind. I kind of had the illusion that I was understanding things. But people worked so hard and the thing I learnt first in America was that people work incredibly hard.
I applied to American Repertory School up at Harvard at got in.
I figured that if we had to choose the woman president, she'd be the first woman president, and if we had the kid from Honolulu and the Harvard graduate, we'd have the first black president. They were both lawyers, and they knew the law, and I saw Obama and said that he's got some vision, and that's what a lot of people are latching on to.
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies, publishing, and the lucrative world of corporate speaking, being a fellow at Harvard seemed, frankly, like a step down.
Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn't read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.
I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I'm really a New Yorker.
The time I have already spent at Harvard has been a stimulating experience, and I look forward to developing my relationship and activities with the students, faculty and friends of the Harvard Business School community.
Being a person of faith is just another of a wide range of fun activities available to those who come to Harvard. When Harvard boasts to admitted students of its more than 40 religious groups, it does so in the same vein that it boasts of its nearly dozen a cappella groups.
Harvard pulsates with life and thought of all kinds, and religion should not be left out of its ongoing discussions.
