I was not supposed to go to Harvard

Last week I took a trip to Harvard Graduate School of Education. It was a quick trip to show my parents, visiting the US for the first time, where I studied and the Cambridge side of Boston. It was a trip I did not know I needed.

You see, I graduated with an Ed.M, in 2011 and my parents who live in India couldn't make it to my graduation. We tried everything to bring them out to the US in the May of 2011 but we just couldn't get their visa in time. I was blessed with an amazing support system of friends and classmates and I ended up having a happy graduation ceremony. I guess however, there had always been a little void left in my heart and soul that my parents couldn't make it to my moment. That, they had only heard about and had not seen my school, the libraries, the streets, and my favorite coffee shops.

Last week - it all happened! While I didn't think too much of our visit at first - it started to dawn on me that this was the closure that my 25-year-old self needed. After all, that 25-year-old had saved her earnings, did not take an education loan or ask her parents for money; graduated with almost double the credits needed and was presented the Intellectual Contribution Award by her lovely faculty and kind peers. That 25-year-old self needed this trip that I finally took 13 years later :)

The thing though is that I was not supposed to go to Harvard. There was almost nothing in my childhood or background that prepared me (or my family) to go to Harvard. In fact, back in 2010, When I told my parents I got a Harvard admit, their knee-jerk reaction was - 'um ok - doesn't mean you have to go.' To be fair, in 2010 I had been at Google for about 5 years. So to my parents, letting go of a cushy job to go back to school was a big gamble and not something they had imagined I would do. My parents confessed to me last week - "We had no idea Harvard was such a great university. We didn't know what an honor it would be to go study here." Sending their kid to another country to study, let alone Harvard, was not one of their dreams - so they never fed me those dreams.

I believe there was a certain amount of freedom that was afforded to me because they didn't mete out a list of dreams that I was expected to fulfill. So, I had the space to take a step back and ask myself 'well, what do I want to do?' For all their flaws, one of the things both my parents did quite well though was to believe in me to try. They trusted my judgment and if I ever told them I wanted something but didn't have the confidence to get it - they never failed to say "Okay... but why not try." It was this freedom with a lack of expectation I think was such a fertile ground for me to do some original dreaming :)

Another reason I was not supposed to go to Harvard was that I wasn't even the smartest in the family. My older sibling was the smarter one! If someone had asked us when we were kids who among the two of us would go abroad to study, I would have pointed at him and gone back to play with my little bag of knick-knacks. I wasn't the greatest at Math and always relied on my almost-perfect score of the English exam to scrounge up a semi-decent grade. After high school when I had to pick what I needed to study, my first choice was to study English, Econ, and Commerce. My family in the hope of making me at least somewhat employable asked me to pick Math instead of English. I hated it so much that I failed a class - twice! So, when the time came for me to choose subjects for my undergrad, my parents had given up on me studying something "job-ready."

Left to my own devices, I gladly picked what I wanted to study - English Lit, Psychology, and Political Science. That was the first time academically, my brain felt like it had found a home. I wasn't exactly a topper in my classes but I knew I was getting so much out of my education. My confidence went through the roof and I started doing things way out of my comfort zone. I directed and acted in a play, wrote a sixth act to Pygmalion, started a magazine for the Psychology department, took a part-time Producer job at All India Radio, taught a class [Shout out to Tina Fernandes ma'm who was my pillar of support and probably the only Lecturer who believed in me from day 1 at St. Francis College for Women]. It wasn't that I suddenly turned cool or adventurous, I was just -- happy. Happy because I was being challenged and stimulated intellectually by my education at the right level. Learning subjects sometimes considered 'of little consequence' gave me the life skills and the professional skills I needed. A fortnight after my undergrad final exams, that 19 year old 'will-she-be-employable' 'English Lit-grad' started her first day at Google.

My employment gave me the economic means to dream of places like Harvard. Most importantly though, it allowed me to surround myself with mentors and peers to learn from. The best piece of advice I got about learning, passion, and opportunity costs has to be from Aruna Adunuthula who told me that if I planned on leaving Google to study on my dime, it better be at a top-class university and to do and learn something I truly love.

That advice was such a game changer and something I try to think about when making life decisions, in general: Always be moving upward and always be learning.

When I got to Harvard, HGSE's Dean Kathleen McCartney said something to the incoming Class of 2011 on Welcome Day that I needed to hear in that moment. She said [I'm paraphrasing] "You may be thinking to yourself, 'Am I supposed to be here? Did they make a mistake?' Well, let me assure you - you are supposed to be here. You belong here."

Yes - I was indeed supposed to go to Harvard.

Now, I admit it has taken me too many years to take my parents to visit Harvard and too many years before I wrote this all down. However, if even one person reading this realizes they have a shot at Harvard - I suppose that would be a win.