My Harvard degree and other awards are emblems of the experiences which led me to them.
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The wood paneled lecture halls, the colorful fall leaves, the hot vanilla Toscaninis, reading great novels in overstuffed library chairs, running through dining halls screaming: Ooh!
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Ah! City steps! City steps! City steps! City steps!
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It’s easy now to romanticize my time here.
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But I had some very difficult times here too. Not good.”
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If only I could finish my work, even if it took eating a jumbo pack of sour Patch Kids to get me through a single 10-page paper.
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I felt that I’d accomplished a great feat.
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I repeat to myself “Done. Not good.”
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A couple of years ago, I went to Tokyo with my husband and I ate at the most remarkable sushi restaurant.
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I don’t even eat fish. I’m vegan. So that tells you how good it was.
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Even with just vegetables, this sushi was the stuff you dreamed about.
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The restaurant had six seats.
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My husband and I marveled at how anyone can make rice so superior to all other rice.
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We wondered why they didn’t make a bigger restaurant and be the most popular place in town.
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Our local friend explained to us that all the best restaurants in Tokyo are that small and do only one type of dish:
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sushi or tempura or teriyaki, because they want to do that thing well and beautifully.
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And it’s not about quantity.
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It’s about taking pleasure in the perfection and beauty of the particular.
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I’m still learning now that it’s about good and maybe never done.
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That the joy and work ethic and virtuosity we bring to the particular can impart a singular type of enjoyment to those we give to and of course, to ourselves.
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In my professional life, it also took me time to find my own reasons for doing my work.
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The first film I was in came out in 1994.
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Again, appallingly, the year most of you were born.
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I was 13 years old upon the film’s release and I can still quote what the New York Times said about me verbatim “Ms Portman poses better than she acts.”
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The film had universally tepid critic response and went on to bomb commercially.
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