M. Gessen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Say Nobel Prizes or the value of the degree in terms of earnings or— I don’t think Nobel Prizes are a great way to measure it because a lot of people come to the United States to do research in university settings and end up winning Nobel Prizes. That doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the difference between higher education in this country and the countries that we draw from. Look at Australian education. Next to free, basically the stress of getting into a university is . . . It exists, but it’s so much less than it is in this country. You basically assume that you’re going to go to university in your city — the best university or the second best or the third best. You’re going to get in. You’re going to get an education. That education is going to allow you to work professionally after. Yes, depending on your grades, you’re going to get into the better or the worse university. It doesn’t have the import that it has here where young people feel like their lives depend on it, depend on where they get in, which seems just absurd. I’m rambling because this is very close to home, because I’m also involved in these arguments with my kids about their education. I say to my daughter, “Look, it doesn’t matter which college you go to. You can get a really good education anywhere” — which is true in this country — “and you can also be miserable anywhere. Just look at some places. Look at what looks good to you. Have a few safety schools. Relax!” She’s just, “No, no. You don’t understand. I’m never going to be successful if I don’t go to one of the best colleges.” That is patently not true. But that’s the kind of stress environment that is created, even for an unschooled kid outside of high-pressure high school environment, even with a parent who is like me. It was about 15 years ago that you described, with very powerful writing, the choices that you took when you learned you had a diagnosis of having some cancer mutations. If I understand this correctly, you chose to have a double mastectomy, but not to have your ovaries removed. You wrote about this in a book. Fifteen years later, what would you say to someone who faces the same diagnosis today? What advice would you give them? Or how does it look different to you 15 years on?…

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