Sheep
In this op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on February 23 by Harvard senior Julie Hartman, she complains that most of her classmates have followed the Covid restrictions imposed by Harvard like obedient sheep whether or not those rules made sense. She bemoans the behavior of her classmates and attributes it to their life long striving to get ahead by being good boys and girls, padding their resumes, and striving for the next credential to make the next step up the ladder. In high school, it was to get to Harvard. At Harvard it was to get into the best graduate school or best Wall Street firm.
Most of us in academic medicine live lives like that—going from gold star to gold star, from grades to SATs, to the best universities and the best academic job where we compete for grants, papers, lab space and glory. I should know. That was me.