Pete talks about Harvard in this conversation, and he mentions a revelation he had there that tracks on exactly to my experience. Namely, that all the wealthy peers and Washington elites bustling around campus are just normal people, no different from the folks back home. https://twitter.com/Chas10Buttigieg/status/1197983300830281735

As someone that'd been battling rural poverty, arriving at Harvard was like changing countries. My peers' lives were so different from my own; I was unprepared. It took me 3 years of impostor syndrome to fully comprehend that my classmates weren't intrinsically better than me.

I met famous politicians, ambassadors, CEOs; I befriended the children of celebrities and even actual princes. At first I felt like I was walking in two worlds. But as time went on, those worlds blended together. The people at Harvard turned out to be normal people.

They'd acquired awards and accolades and titles, but underneath that, they were the same as my friends back in rural Michigan. Most of them weren't any smarter than the folks back home. They all cared about their friends and family. They had hopes and fears. They were people.

Once I realized that Harvard is actually a bunch of relatively normal people, sucked into one of the craziest places on Earth, each trying to find their place, my impostor syndrome began fading. I belonged there, and tbh, so did many of my friends back home that weren't admitted.

Still, at the end of senior year, my college friends and I had an impostor-syndrome-fueled discussion about our time in Cambridge. Did we do Harvard right? Did we join the right clubs? Take the right classes? Spend time with the right people? Did we set ourselves up for success?

When I look at Pete, I still instinctively see someone that "did Harvard better than me." He was elected president of the IOP. He got the high-paying job at Mckinsey. He did everything required to end up on the fast-track to a comfy corporate life in a bustling East-coast city.

And personally, after going through Harvard, I don't find that part of his story all that compelling. I saw firsthand that he had to work his ass off to accomplish those things, but I also personally know other IOP presidents and Mckinsey analysts. They're all normal people.

I don't find Pete's Rhodes scholarship all that inspiring. What's inspiring is his work in South Bend. Pete's Harvard diploma gave him a first-class ticket to the manufactured world of "elites," and instead he decided to spend his time bouncing between Indiana and Afghanistan.

Pete chose to go home. He had the option to leave behind the brilliant, deserving, people in his community that didn't win the Harvard admissions lottery. Instead, he chose to come back and serve them. That's something very few people in his situation choose to do.

In the interview, Pete wrestles with the idea of political ambition. How many of his life choices were made cynically? And does that make the work he's done, or the experiences he's had invalid? It's an honesty that I really appreciate.

Personally, I think that if Pete was actually motivated by naked political ambition, he would have moved somewhere new after college and run for Congress in a safe seat. It would have been a lot easier to advance that way; it's not easy going from Mayor to President!

Pete chose to return to SB because he wanted to help his home town. That's inspiring to me. And as I think about what I want to do with the incredible education I've been gifted, and the good that I want to do for my community, I see Pete as a great model to look up to. /Fin/