Alexa....you are a "wunderkind"!....never to be defined by your occupation or vocation!

I totally hear you - that sort of pressure can really crack you up. As the saying goes, the higher you are, the harder you fall.

Sooner or later, almost everyone gets vertigo.

What a cop out. Face it you couldn't stand the pressure and went for what you thought was the easier route.

I couldn't help but think of the Big Chill when I read those comments. Remember the deceased? Fabulous science student at Ann Arbor, turned his back on some big fellowship, ended up wandering from job to job, commited suicide in his 30's. There was that scene where William Hurt (Nick), whom you can't actually see in the scene, is taping the Meg Tilley character (ex-girlfriend of the suicide guy, named Alec), and she's talking about Alec and what was he like. At one point, she says, "He said he should have taken that fellowship," pauses, and says "What's the matter, Nick?" Because obviously, Nick has had a visible physical reaction to the fact that Alec carried around the knowledge that turning his back on his brains was a monumentally bad decision. I won't specifically say anything about our blogger here, but the fact that it was the scene I immediately thought about says something...don't you think? I'm not projecting suicide...but regret is another issue. I do commend Alexa for being so brutally honest.

Nope, don't buy that theory one bit. Whether Ms. Viswanathan is a wunderkind or a second rate poser, I don't buy that she wanted to get caught. Success is like a drug and the more you have the more you want, and it seems that as a child Viswanathan had a lot. You see, if she really wanted to be discovered as a phony or a fraud or as you put it a B student, she could have written an original piece of fiction that wasn't interesting enough to be published, but instead she soaked up the $500K book deal and lifted choice blurbs from her favorite highschool tomes. Had she tanked the original manuscript that landed her the deal, she could have held that failure to her chest like a scarlet letter that said she didn't have what it takes to be an author. The great thing is that she was exposed, and hopefully Harvard will take the reins and jettison her butt to the curb - of course in the name of their honor code....

Wow, you really got folks going with this one. I lean toward the school of thought of "if it looks, sounds, and acts like a duck...it's probably some other species of bird doing horrible things and letting the poor duck take the fall. Or it's really the damn duck after all, but quacking that his intentions weren't meant to look like a duck.
I think what I'm saying is we will never really know the true intentions of another human being. We can only look at their actions, weigh them against their past and see if it evens out. And we also will tip the scales with our own prejudice. I shouldn't write this much at 7am.
Conclusion: Viswanathan is a genius con-artist who got in over her head and has found salvation by helping children with unpronounceable names.

WOW Alexa...you know, I never thought of it like that. And I can totally see where you're coming from. I remember in the 6th grade I had an English teacher that loved, loved, loved me. She would give me (I kid you not!) A++++++++++ on my papers. No one else got those kinds of pluses, and it made me wonder why since I thought there were a lot of other people who wrote better than me. So one day, my friend Corrie suggested I turn in a paper for her, and she for me, and her paper got the A++++++++++, and mine got a respectable B+. I dont know why, but that B+ felt so much better than my A++++++++++. So yay to the wunderkind-kids!

Alexa, I need your advice. I know this is a strange post, but do you ever contact your blog viewers? You are an incredible writer and that's exactly what I want to be. A talented writer, with a career in journalism. But I'm also a starving artist, and I need good money fast. Can you give me any tips to becoming an escort, or must I learn thigns the hard way like everybody else?? Great blog, by the way. Keep up the good writing, and hopefully I hear from you soon. Take care...
Rainne

And, for the record, Alexa...
...who cares what everybody else thinks? If you're meeting the expectations you give yourself than you'll always find happiness. Life is ABOUT being selfish, otherwise it wouldn't be YOUR life, it'd be someone else's. I've written a blog very similar to this. You cannot become who you want to be just by living up to others' standards. And you most certainly cannot allow their opinions to matter, because in the end all you have is YOU. When their mouths are shut, you will continue to sing. And that will always matter most. Your last paragraph says it all. I'm glad I know I'm not the only one in this world who doesn't want to be a sheep. That "Bullshit Meter" reader obviously can't read into his/her own bullshit. *Rainne*

Doesn't really matter. I just feel bad for the girl who lifted the passages. She'll have a hard time finishing school at Harvard, and then will have trouble getting hired at McDonalds afterwards.