An Education

I remember the first time I saw her, this young woman who would come to symbolize everything I once coveted and the superficial part of myself that I later grew to despise. It was early 1995, the spring of my freshman year at Harvard. I was sitting in an economics discussion section. She barged in with all the insouciance and entitlement of the cosseted 19-year-old she was, and, oblivious to the other students sitting there, began talking to our graduate-student instructor about a makeup test.