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I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for 'On Harvard Time,' which was a student TV show trying to be 'The Daily Show.' And I wrote a humor column for 'The Crimson' starting my sophomore year.
Alexandra Petri -
It's not that Millennials don't believe some things are serious. We'll make 'It Gets Better' videos or perform comedy for disaster relief. But sum up our lives in a phrase? The Importance of Never Being Too Earnest.
Alexandra Petri
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By isolating ourselves from those with whose opinions we disagree, we lose the ability to defend our beliefs.
Alexandra Petri -
There should be no real difficulty in condemning Nazis, white supremacists, and the Ku Klux Klan. They are, for God's sake, Nazis and white supremacists. This should not require moral courage. This is obvious. This is the moral equivalent of the text you type to prove you're not a robot.
Alexandra Petri -
As long as I'm writing stuff and people are reading it, I'll be happy.
Alexandra Petri -
All that time that we spend tweeting our thoughts and emotions to our next of kin, we could be writing the great American novel, starting a business, or just living.
Alexandra Petri -
Life has its trade-offs. As you age, you lose things like teeth and the ability to play in the ball pit at fast-food restaurants, and you gain things like experience and employer-based health insurance.
Alexandra Petri -
The biggest way to be productive is if you're procrastinating on another more important project.
Alexandra Petri
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Standup comedy was my weird hobby. I would drag my poor parents out to the only open mics that were in coffee shops instead of bars. I'd get up and go, 'Hi, I'm 17, and I have jokes about matriculation!' At the time I was like, 'Why is no one laughing?'
Alexandra Petri -
History contains heroes, but no one is a hero entirely, and no one is a hero for very long.
Alexandra Petri -
In general, sincerity is awkward.
Alexandra Petri -
Success is like food caught in your teeth: much more noticeable when it happens to other people. If it happens to you, other people have to take you aside and say something.
Alexandra Petri -
I know from personal experience that it is extremely difficult to read while you work out, especially on a Stairmaster.
Alexandra Petri -
As long as cantankerous old people have existed, they have complained that kids nowadays don't seem to know anything.
Alexandra Petri
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No matter how successful you are, no matter how good you are at what you do, even if a golden path rolls out in front of your feet your whole life, there will come one particularly bleak Tuesday when you glance over at Facebook and notice that Jen From Down The Hall has just won an Oscar.
Alexandra Petri -
George W. Bush has dutifully, if not intentionally, provided Americans with laughs for nearly a decade. He has also made them cry, sometimes for the same reason.
Alexandra Petri -
I tend to process stuff by making jokes about it. It's something that makes me annoying to be around in times of real crisis.
Alexandra Petri -
If you want to be famous because you do something well or badly, be it singing while fat or hitting balls of various shapes and hues, you have to be prepared to divulge. We live in the age of the chronic overshare.
Alexandra Petri -
MS Paint was my creative outlet for many years.
Alexandra Petri -
Wilde is an invaluable acquaintance. Often, in situations where I am required to appear witty, I simply steal large chunks from his works and attempt to pass them off as my own with minor modifications.
Alexandra Petri
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My first summer in college, I interned for Arena Stage in D.C. and taught a disastrous class on standup comedy to middle schoolers at the Arena Stage camp. I had never taught anything before, and needless to say, I quickly lost control of the class.
Alexandra Petri -
Forced to confront a reptile or an international financial crisis, I'll take the reptile every time.
Alexandra Petri -
Books are wonderful. They are like people, except they mind less when you put them down and wander off to eat something.
Alexandra Petri -
Stereotyped as convention-going, pocket-protector-wearing, chess-playing, infrequently-showering types, nerds are one of our society's most ridiculed groups. And, for a university with an international reputation as a bastion of intellectualism, Harvard is startlingly devoid of them.
Alexandra Petri