/lit/ - Literature

You have to pick one city in which to receive a year's stipend on the condition that you finish your novel in that time. The stipend covers a studio apartment and all necessities.

What city do you pick?

>>7807576
2230 Total
M: 740
V: 800
W:690
Protip: Unless your writing section is catastrophically low, nobody cares. I got into Tufts, Emory and Vanderbilt, with excessive scholarships from state schools and waitlisted at Princeton, UChicago and Penn.

Other big stats were 4.0 GPA, 4.5+ average score over 8 AP exams, eagle scout and recruitable athletic performance.

>>7809086
CHILDREN LISTEN TO THIS MAN. Time management and discipline are everything in college.

>>7807601
>when your region knows it's too retarded to take a real man's test
Fuck flyover states. So glad I ran out as fast as I could.

>>7807797
Black people are still "underrepresented" at elite institutions and Asians still "overrepresented" despite the disparity in standards. Nobody's taking your place except some Asian kid with a more impressive CV.

>>7098787
I can't wait to finish my novel so I can do something else.

I miss my ex-girlfriend even though she took advantage of me and lied to me. Up until the end I'd thought she was nearly perfect and hope to marry her, and I'd never allowed myself to feel that way about anyone before.

I want to do horrible things to her new boyfriend but I won't because in my head I know she can be replaced.

Reading Prometheus Rising makes me feel a lot better.

I wish I could believe in God and make my parents happy but it's just not right.

I'd join a Universalist congregation, but they'll hate that even more.

I worry that my novel is going to be dismissed as standard over-educated young white guy Pynchon-impersonation.

I actually think it's quite good, but that's probably all some people will see.

>>7081582
Went to a top-tier American University, can confirm that most people are just exceptionally smart and motivated normalfags. Fortunately there are plenty of people with interesting talents and interests to make it worthwhile, in addition to the badass professors.

>>7019954
The 1960s in the US were just an awkward phase. Stuff that seemed revolutionary now has been subsumed into the capital machine. It's a weird scene here, but that's pretty much to be expected when pluralism is the foundation of your social cohesion (something of an oxymoron but we're surviving it). You have to remember how much our financial and technological centers run the rest of the world even if they make a big deal out of kowtowing to the SJW crowd. Essentially our "left wing" is just liberal capitalism, clearing the way for unprecedented capital accumulation and economic/technological hegemony in the near future. The key to future glory is insincerely supporting liberal policy. Europe, on the other hand... European society lost the will to live after the world wars. I don't know if I can blame them. Any continental who doesn't move to the US, Australia or New Zealand or oppose the EU/UN deserves everything they get.

>>6913773
>Final Clubs
>Olympians
>Recruitment for Wall Street and management consulting firms all year 'round.
>Marxists

One of these things is not like the others. Don't let the faculty and edgy college lesbians fool you, Harvard is all about gaining as much for yourself as humanly possible. Protip, professors in the business, medical, public health and law school are conservative as fuck. We just had either a law or business professor, I forget, go to court with a Chinese restaurant for overcharging him like $4 just to prove a point.

>>6876210
>>6876266
>>6876282
>>6876295
>tfw Japanese girlfriend bought me a box set of studio Ghibli movies for my birthday last year
>tfw we broke up and I can't even hear the music from any of those movies without just about losing it
>tfw today is my birthday
>tfw that box set is in my bedside table waiting until I'm ready to come back to it
Fuck bros, whether there's a "real" conflict or not in those movies it's damn hard not to make an emotional connection with whatever the characters are doing.

>>6860430
I'm >>6859386
The difference between professors at Harvard (didn't go to Harvard, btw, just fucked a of girls there) and the professors at a reputable state school isn't that great. Professors have all invested much more in their fields than any seconday school teacher, and they're dying for students who actually want to learn from them. They're just as sick of boring kids warming seats in their lectures that they're massively overquaified to teach as you are of teachers who don't know shit and don't care to find out.

Not trying to put you down by pointing out shortcomings you're aready aware of, but I agree that you seem to be protecting yourself psychologically, and doing what it takes to get into university (and getting the most out of it when you get there) will require facing those shortcomings head on, because people are going to ask about it no matter what you do. You're probably going to have to absolutely maul the SAT or ACT (which will require a lot of work) before they'll make an exception or even consider scholarship opportunities for a high school record as weak as you're claiming.

I say all this assuming you have a thirst for knowledge, but if you legitimately don't I guess that's fine, but I can't empathize or help.

>>6837694
New, Amazon is usually good. Since you're moving to Boston, however, I'll give you some local recommendations.
Raven Used Books in Harvard Square has cheap used copies of everything you could expect a Harvard student or professor to own.
The Harvard Bookstore has a good membership program and holds events with high-profile authors of all kinds.
Check your neighborhood in addition to scoping out the places above. Boston is loaded with interesting bookstores. People here (excluding the townies) tend to be well educated and well read.
>pic related: best neighborhood

>>6752444
>>6752446
>>6752458
>>6752511
>>6752779
>>6752796
You clearly didn't go to a good university. All of the girls I dated/fucked in school could carry on a conversation on their field of study and at least one other interest. If you didn't go to a top 30 American university or Oxbridge, you're out of luck for good women.

>>6678888
Step aside, comfiest urban architecture coming through.

>>6625259
What school are you going to?
There are many white collar jobs and graduate programs that don't care what you major in so long as you have a good GPA, demanding extracurriculars and internships. Many of these same jobs also place a great deal of importance on where you went, so that's useful info from a "can I get a job with this degree" perspective.

If you apply yourself, you'll sharpen your critical thinking, reading and argumentation skills beyond belief. If you skate through, you'll learn a lot of new names.

This board fetishizes Big Books too much. Fiction is an exercise in showing the audience a new facet of reality, and many authors do this effectively without resorting to clever linguistic tricks like Pynchon, overblown dialogue like Delillo or edgy formatting like Wallace.

As a bit of a Pynchon nut myself, I had my eyes opened when a writing professor I respect revealed to me in conversation that the only Pynchon he has read was Lot 49, and that he found it distasteful. This is a man who once shared an agent with Pynchon and has flipped through the original manuscript of Gravity's Rainbow where it sat in a closet. He hasn't read Wallace at all. At least he shares my dislike of Delillo.

This professor has published many accomplished novels and was once a personal friend of Phillip Roth, yet has decided that the big didactic novels of the past half century weren't worth finishing. Works like this are meant for academics, not communicators. He advised me that if you approach reading as less of a challenge and more of an aesthetic experience you'll find the aesthetics of IJ and GR lacking in comparison to more personal novels written for the reader.