(09-19-2015, 10:58 AM)garvin link Wrote:Just saw something that said Obama's advisor Valerie Jerrett is a 1977 Stanford graduate, which would put on on campus at the same time as several of us here, including me. Anybody ever heard this before?
(09-19-2015, 10:58 AM)garvin link Wrote:Just saw something that said Obama's advisor Valerie Jerrett is a 1977 Stanford graduate, which would put on on campus at the same time as several of us here, including me. Anybody ever heard this before?
Quote:"She enjoyed everything at Stanford," she recalls.... As it turned out, there was not much "doctor" in her, though. An encounter with a cadaver in an anatomy class during her sophomore year provided what Jarrett calls a "clarity moment." "I sat there and thought, 'I can't do this,'" she says. "I could not deal with cadavers. That, coupled with organic chemistry, was the end of my medical career."
Still, she was smitten with the academic challenges at Stanford. "I loved the intellectual rigor in a setting where the competition was on the same level, which I had not always had."
And like many students who came from a northern region, "I loved the weather. I could sit outside on Lake Lagunita and study, or in one of the big chairs at the Law School. You might think the setting is a distraction but I found it enriching. I thrived there. I loved every single day I was there."
Less than a decade after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and just a few years after the nation's elite educational institutions began to actively recruit black students, racial tensions in America were still high in the mid-'70s. Jarrett was an anomaly at Stanford, not because she was black but because her experience was so different from most other African-American students at the time. And because she did not receive a penny of financial aid. "I was very aware of being one of the few African-American students not on scholarship, and that Stanford prided itself on diversity and was very generous with financial assistance," she says. "There were a lot of my black classmates who would have not been able to go there were it not for financial assistance. My parents reminded me every day how much they were sacrificing."
Jarrett was an enthusiastic participant in Ujamaa's cultural pursuits, and joined hundreds of students in front of Old Union in 1977 to protest apartheid and Stanford's investments in South Africa. Looking back now, those days offer an intriguing precursor to Jarrett's role as a conciliator at ease in any cultural setting. The places she had lived and studied were natural training grounds. "Race was not a factor at all for me," she says of her days on the Farm. "I'd go to the café and oftentimes sit at the 'black' table and just as often sit at the table that was integrated. I managed to walk among different worlds."
Quote:"She enjoyed everything at Stanford," she recalls.... As it turned out, there was not much "doctor" in her, though. An encounter with a cadaver in an anatomy class during her sophomore year provided what Jarrett calls a "clarity moment." "I sat there and thought, 'I can't do this,'" she says. "I could not deal with cadavers. That, coupled with organic chemistry, was the end of my medical career."
Still, she was smitten with the academic challenges at Stanford. "I loved the intellectual rigor in a setting where the competition was on the same level, which I had not always had."
And like many students who came from a northern region, "I loved the weather. I could sit outside on Lake Lagunita and study, or in one of the big chairs at the Law School. You might think the setting is a distraction but I found it enriching. I thrived there. I loved every single day I was there."
Less than a decade after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and just a few years after the nation's elite educational institutions began to actively recruit black students, racial tensions in America were still high in the mid-'70s. Jarrett was an anomaly at Stanford, not because she was black but because her experience was so different from most other African-American students at the time. And because she did not receive a penny of financial aid. "I was very aware of being one of the few African-American students not on scholarship, and that Stanford prided itself on diversity and was very generous with financial assistance," she says. "There were a lot of my black classmates who would have not been able to go there were it not for financial assistance. My parents reminded me every day how much they were sacrificing."
Jarrett was an enthusiastic participant in Ujamaa's cultural pursuits, and joined hundreds of students in front of Old Union in 1977 to protest apartheid and Stanford's investments in South Africa. Looking back now, those days offer an intriguing precursor to Jarrett's role as a conciliator at ease in any cultural setting. The places she had lived and studied were natural training grounds. "Race was not a factor at all for me," she says of her days on the Farm. "I'd go to the café and oftentimes sit at the 'black' table and just as often sit at the table that was integrated. I managed to walk among different worlds."
