The view may be very different from Redmond. Apparently Tal Liron found it so. ("Amherst, Microsoft: compare and contrast," Feb. 7) Microsoft's founders certainly believe that they are changing the world in a positive way. But then, CEO Steve Ballmer, Chairman William H. Gates,and the rest have isolated themselves so that their company becomes the be-all and end-all of their lives. Microsoft maintains a campus for the express purpose of wedding employees to their jobs. A good portion of the book "Showstopper!" ostensibly about the creation of Windows NT, is devoted to the collapse of its programmers' marriages as their allegiance to their company absorbs the rest of their lives.
So, I agree with Mr. Liron that Microsoft's main campus lives in a fantastically absurd bubble, and I could go on for days with legends about it. But there are only two actual Microsoft campuses. The rest of the company's sites are, by and large, regular corporate offices where the people come to work, sometimes work late, but usually go home at night.
I've interviewed several former Microserfs, and I've heard their war stories. Their offices are located in Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, and they live normal lives. Likewise, there is only one Netscape campus, one Apple campus, and the rest are regular offices. The capital of anything, even of our own country, is always a crazy funhouse world where the balance of life is subsumed by the goals of the corporate entity whatever it may be.
The question is, do you want to live in the capital?
Amherst might be considered a capital of higher learning-U.S. News and World Report, Robert Frost, Calvin Coolidge and all that. But it isn't the capital and it isn't much more isolated than any other four-year college, no matter what the socioeconomic makeup. Fewer students may have to hold down a part-time job than at less elite institutions, but very many students still do. A single ideology may permeate Amherst, but the dissenting voices are usually quite loud as well. For every student organization there seems to be an equal and opposite organization. To wit: Amherst seems to be about subcultures, whereas Microsoft is about homogeneity.
Additionally, Microsoft lacks the casual self-hatred that I have found most Amherst students express-the realization that they are blessed and the inability to deal with that realization except with massive guilt and antagonism towards the institution that sustains them. These attributes are checks against the bubble. They can't erase it, but they make it less onerous and rapidly decrease the risk that the individual will become isolated from society at large.
You are not assimilated as much as your self-loathing mental mechanisms might yell that you are. The very fear of assimilation is proof against it. We talk a lot about the "real world" but we forget that there are a great many unreal worlds, as well as real worlds, outside Amherst. Yet even when our eyes, like Tal's, fall upon those illusory existences, we then make the mistake of assuming that because we now live inside an artificial world that it will continue to be so. We assume that we will go from one bubble to the next, and that simply isn't true. It's like believing that the economy will just keeping getting better and better, as we did six months ago, or our equally flawed belief, assuming that we are definitely spiraling down into recession. Some of you will go on to another bubble, but most of you will not.
What college is (short version): College is a final glorious burst of education before learning must share its time with your adult obligations. It is, as I and many of my friends have found out, the last place where you can fail magnificently without permanent damage. It is an artificial stage of life, true, but I believe a very necessary one, especially for highly intelligent people. By this, I do not mean that highly intelligent people are more deserving of college, but that their psyches need it more. Their thirst must be slaked before moving on to the next stage of life.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the overwhelming majority of students at Amherst get in because they're smart and they work hard. That doesn't seem true when you're in the bubble, but I can vouch for its veracity outside of it. It is all a matter of perspective. And you need the opportunities that Amherst provides. Please, make use of them so that you can be happy, successful and useful in the next life.
The problem with a campus like Microsoft's is that it does not move you forward to that next life. This is also true of some careers in academia, politics and entertainment. Now, granted, this statement is being made in a college publication by someone who should theoretically be out doing bigger and better things instead of dwelling on the past ... but do as I say, not as I do (and that applies to Ovaltine Jello shots also). Your needs and aspirations change as you live. After college you go through a period of casting around, trying to find a place in the world. Then you find a job where you want to stay, where you feel useful. You settle into one geographic location, meet someone with whom you want to face the world, and eventually you desire to raise children. This cycle is sufficient to meet most people's needs, and it will meet those of the majority of people reading this. It is not a cycle of stagnation, as much as artists and teenagers might label it so, but a cycle of growth and change.
This is not a cycle that takes place in the bubbles of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. The fact that most of Amherst's graduates do live it disproves Tal Liron's conclusions. Not entirely, mind you, there are exceptions-both magnificent and grotesque-but they are indeed exceptions. They are the ones who go to the capitals.
And you may do that, or you may not. But it isn't inevitable, or even likely.
Johnnie Lamar Odom II is a member of the Class of 2000.