S03E53: DEFUSING the H BOMB - Practical Advice for Harvard Grads on How Not to Look Like D Bags

Ever wondered why some Harvard graduates shroud their Ivy League education in secrecy? This is the "H-bomb," a term used to describe the act of telling someone you went to Harvard College. Let's explore the notion that Harvard graduates feel compelled to withhold this information or discuss it with hesitation.

Through satirical commentary and examples, we highlight the pretentiousness associated with the "H-bomb" phenomenon, questioning the significance and relevance of dropping the "H-bomb" in social interactions, debunking the perceived need for such pretentiousness.

This week's thankful is the wonder drug TXA, or tranexamic acid. Imagine a surgical procedure with reduced bleeding, less bruising, and minimized swelling - TXA makes this a reality. We delve into the revolutionary role this miracle drug plays, from face and eyelid lifts to breast lifts and augmentations, enhancing safety and ease for both surgeons and patients. As always, we appreciate your feedback and topic suggestions!

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00:00:05 The H Bomb

00:12:07 TXA

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S03E53 DEFUSING the H BOMB - Practical Advice to Harvard Grads on How Not to Look Like D Bags

[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: This week's episode is titled Defusing the H Bomb: Practical Advice to Harvard grads on how not to look like a D Bag.

That's dirt bags, in case you were wondering about the abbreviation.

Not going to lie, this podcast episode is probably one of the stupidest topics I probably will ever have to deal with, but it was this deep, visceral, disgusted reaction that I had when I read this Wall Street Journal article, which made me feel that there was no way I wasn't going to discuss this.

A Wall Street Journal article titled "Advice to Harvard Students and Alums Don't Gratuitously Drop. The H Bomb" written by Douglas Burkin opens with these words:

"In a December interview with the campus newspaper, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana was given the chance to offer a word of advice to seniors, ''Don't gratuitously drop the H Bomb." Khurana said."

"The H Bomb for those unaware of lingo from the most famous Ivy League school is the thermonuclear act of saying aloud that one attends or attended Harvard."

"The process of explaining to someone not from Harvard, that you went to Harvard is complicated, students at Harvard will tell you repeatedly. For years, Ivy Leaguers have been conspicuously obtuse about where they went to school, But the H Bomb conversation is at an all time high."

Okay. Seriously, WTF! Gratuitously dropped the H bomb? Let's dive into this pretentious self-aggrandizing stupidity. Oops. Did I give away the punchline to this podcast already? Oh, well,

First of all, I didn't realize it was a big deal that if someone asked you where you went to college, that you had to be secretive about going to Harvard.

Was this term H Bomb a real thing or just made up for this article? So I did a quick search and unfortunately H Bomb is a term that's been used since 1990. But as you might guess, the only people who actually use the inane phrase H Bomb are people who go to Harvard.

Other than articles written in the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, no one else mentions H Bomb, except when other people like the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Harvard people are pretending it's a thing.

It reminds me of that old meme from that 2004 movie Mean Girls where Gretchen, one of the mean girls says, "That is so fetch!" And the mean girl, queen Regina says, "Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen."

I think most people, including me, had no idea it was such a burden for Harvard people to talk to others about their school.

Here is the first recorded mention of the H Bomb in the Harvard student newspaper in 1990 by student Kenneth Katz.

Quote, "I'm back at Harvard. The one place where I can finally escape being asked the one nightmarish question that's dogged me and many other Harvard students. Where did you go to school?

He continues in the article, "Non-Harvard students may think I'm being oversensitive by not wanting to talk about Harvard. Aren't I just another Harvard elitist? After all, the vast majority of college students I met this summer were all eager to talk, about their schools. From their schools US News and World Report rankings to Greek life."

"I too can remember a time right after I received my acceptance letter that I would actually hope to be asked the college question just so I could say the H word. Over a year later, though the mere mention of Harvard foretells conversational disaster."

Fortunately, poor Kenneth Katz managed to survive these conversational disasters and graduate from Harvard. He was able to finally become a dermatologist, thankfully. But presumably Dr. Katz is still dogged by that nightmarish question about where he went to college.

Here is a more recent, even cringier example from a 2019 Harvard Crimson article by Ben Roy, quote, "Listen, we've all been there. You're at a party off campus or a bar in the city or back wherever you call home. They look at you and say, Hey, so where did you go to college?"

"Damn, you didn't think it would come to this, but here we are again, decision time. It's just you, the nuclear football, and this poor unwilling victim who has placed themselves squarely in your reticule. So do you blow this fool to kingdom come, or do you try to snake your way around the topic?"

"Yes, this is the classic Harvard dilemma that dogs all Ivy crested Crimson Scholars the moment they venture beyond the Harvard bubble. Under what circumstances might one ethically drop the H bomb?"

The writer goes on in obviously tongue-in-cheek manner, but even a parody of this H Bomb idea is terrible to even read. I can't even imagine what it must be like to actually talk to a Harvard graduate who can't even tell us where they graduated without wringing their hands.

Somehow these poor students are equating Harvard College to JK Rowling's, evil magician, Voldemort. This school outside of Boston, located in Cambridge, is somehow the Institution That Must Not Be Named or terrible things will happen.

Well, we as Muggles or maybe as Harry Potters, I don't know how the analogy really plays out. But anyway, if you are like me and you're wondering what is the big deal about going to Harvard and telling people about the fact you go to Harvard,

Well, here's another article that sort of explains this stupidity that is associated with telling someone you go to Harvard.

This New York Times article titled "The H-Bomb Fizzles: the Harvard Brand, Takes a Hit" from 2016, may help explain this. Written by Teddy Wayne, a novelist who is doing research on Harvard for a book he was writing, the article starts off, "There exists a species of person, typically a well groomed overachiever, who, when asked where he or she went to college, rather than state its name directly, will provide a Russian nesting doll set of geographic responses."

"In New England. Massachusetts. Well, Boston. Um, Cambridge. Finally sotto voce with an apologetic wince or a sheepish smile, anticipating the word being volleyed, back in an affected Boston Brahman accent, Harvard. Hahvahd."

"For decades, circumspect students and alumni of the nation's oldest university have played this unbearable little game. They're coy because they don't want to destroy our egos, but they can't wait for the moment they drop the H bomb."

So from what I can tell, basically Harvard graduates play this game about telling people where they went to school because they think other people will be so impressed that they went to Harvard that they won't be able to talk about anything else.

Or they worry that other people will think they are bragging, elitist a-holes since they go to Harvard.

Okay. First of all, I do know a fair number of Harvard graduates from medical school and residency, and most of them are pretty decent people who are not this brand of a-holes.

I've never heard them hesitate to say Harvard when asked where they went to school, and I don't think I've ever heard them name drop Harvard either. Sort of like Andy from the TV show The Office talks about going to Cornell all the time.

And full disclosure, my brother went to Harvard for his master's degree and he's a pretty chill guy.

Maybe because most of the people I know were in the medical field and they weren't finance bros or some other career path, but most of these Harvard grads seemed pretty down to earth. Perhaps it may be because medicine is not really a field where connections and privilege mean as much as some other fields.

If you can't get good MCAT scores or medical school grades or do well on your board exams, it's pretty hard to skate by on inherited wealth, or your parents' golfing buddies making a phone call for you

Personally, I never thought that going to Harvard was such a huge deal, but maybe having gone to some fairly elitist schools myself, I feel comfortable not being super impressed by people who say they're Harvard grads.

I mean, full disclosure, I applied to Harvard but didn't get in for undergrad. I had to settle for Duke University, then Columbia University for medical School, University of Michigan for plastic surgery training and UCLA for pediatric and craniofacial training.

So throwing around a name like Harvard when I could throw around a bunch of pretty elitist names too, maybe immunized me a little bit from thinking Harvard was such an impressive place.

Quickly Googling Harvard students, the two who are arguably the most impressive are the ones who decided it wasn't even worth the time to get a Harvard degree. Bill Gates of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook both left before graduating.

And for every other Harvard graduate such as Natalie Portman, Linsanity's Jeremy Lin, or former Jets quarterback Ryan Fitz Magic that graduated from Harvard, there are also the Harvard graduates such as the Unibomber, Ted Kaczinski, and the quote, "my family gave 2.5 million and I had crappy high school grades," student Jared Kushner.

Harvard is like any other university where a significant proportion of students are not admitted on merit. Many are either recruited athletes, legacy students, kids whose families have donated significant sums to the university, or are children of faculty and staff.

It is estimated that roughly three quarters of these applicants would've been rejected under merit-based standards. There are great students, average students, and mediocre students just like at every other institution.

For Harvard graduates to think they need to hesitate before dropping the H Bomb on others, that's pompous. It's pretentious, egotistical, big-headed, poncy, and every other synonym I could find for conceited in the dictionary.

Now I can understand a certain degree of acting stupid like this. When I first finished my training, for a long time when people would ask what I did for a living, I wouldn't say plastic surgeon, right off the bat.

I'd say, doctor, and then if they asked, I'd say surgeon, and then I'd finally say, plastic surgeon if they kept asking.

And that drawn out way of telling people my job was driven by the exact same thinking that these silly Harvard graduates use. I don't wanna brag too much because it's a big deal that I'm a plastic surgeon, right? Why be inundated with questions from the shock and awe of meeting a plastic surgeon?

And once I honestly realized what a douchey thing it was to be coy about my job, unfortunately I probably realized way too late. Now when someone asks, I just say plastic surgeon. It's just an effing job, like any other job out there, and nobody cares.

And Harvard is a college just like any other college out there. Nobody cares.

So advice to anyone whether you go to Blue Mountain State University or Harvard College, the correct answer to avoid being or sounding like a completely bloviating a-hole is when asked where you go to school or where you went to school, is to promptly and cheerfully say your college name without delay.

If you went to Harvard, say, Harvard, don't worry about what people think about your school. Own it. Don't try to explain you grew up in a small town, or that you work in a soup kitchen in your spare time. You went to a college .Deal with whatever people are saying to you.

Anything else will just validate all of the elitist self-important stereotypes that hopefully you are trying to eradicate. And never, ever, ever use the term H Bomb, at least where I can hear you. Thank you.

My weekly thankful is something I've discussed on the podcast Three Plastic Surgeons and a Microphone with my friends, Dr. Sam Jejurikar and Sal Pacella.

It's a drug called TXA or tranexamic acid that we use during surgery. Sal likes to use a Borat voice when he talks about it, TX and A. It's a nice!

Now it seems frivolous or extra to be thankful for a drug that I use at work. It might seem like it's being thankful for your computer or pen and paper at work. It's just something that you use.

But after working for 17 years as a plastic surgeon, it's the little things that make your work better and easier that you appreciate and having used TXA for almost two years, I realize it's one of the little things that has really helped both me and my patients with better outcomes.

TXA helps reduce bleeding during surgery. Most of the time patients don't bleed too much during surgery, but some patients tend to bleed more than others. But TXA makes every patient a non bleeder pretty much. It's very safe, easy to use, and I have used it for every operation. Face and eyelid lifts, breast lifts and augmentations, tummy tucks, liposuction, you name it.

Bruising and swelling is less with TXA as well. I consider it a wonder drug and out of the many things we use in surgery to help us get better results, I would say it's quickly become a staple for me and probably every other plastic surgeon out there.

Having surgical skill is certainly the paramount thing for surgeons, but we all like the little things that also help make us look good as surgeons and TXA is one of them.

If you wanna share a thankful or what you think about your school versus the H Bomb, DM me @BotoxandBurpeesPodcast on Instagram, or leave a comment Youtube.com/@BotoxAndBurpees.

Thank you for all your feedback. It has been much appreciated, and if you have any topics or ideas you'd like to hear about, please let me know. And don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get this podcast. Thank you.