06-18-2018, 02:32 PM
Hah! I am generally of the view that while institutions may shape people, the people much more collectively constitute the institution (see, e.g., recent scandals at U$C).
Holmes clearly embodies a bit of the entitled, of course-I-can-change-the-world-myself attitude I've found more common in Stanford alums than in peer alums from East Coast undergraduate institutions. We want to skip all steps, rules, and conventions, and change things directly ourselves. But that is no more or less true than that Andrew Luck, Nneka Ogwumike, or Katie Ledecky are representative of the part of Stanford's alumni culture that is down-to-earth, quiet, well spoken, and mild-mannered all while being totally precedent setting and world destroying, and such talent coming from our peer institutions almost always manifests itself with far more arrogance, vanity, and self-congratulation. So I suppose you take the good with the bad.
Holmes clearly embodies a bit of the entitled, of course-I-can-change-the-world-myself attitude I've found more common in Stanford alums than in peer alums from East Coast undergraduate institutions. We want to skip all steps, rules, and conventions, and change things directly ourselves. But that is no more or less true than that Andrew Luck, Nneka Ogwumike, or Katie Ledecky are representative of the part of Stanford's alumni culture that is down-to-earth, quiet, well spoken, and mild-mannered all while being totally precedent setting and world destroying, and such talent coming from our peer institutions almost always manifests itself with far more arrogance, vanity, and self-congratulation. So I suppose you take the good with the bad.