Great read. Made for a great afternoon. If I’d been in your circle when I was young, I’d have made you my mentor, with or without your permission.

I had a hunch I knew what got you into trouble. Sure enough, I was way down deep in part 4 and there it was. Just popped right off the page. Oh you are a storyteller; setting the stage, background, context, characters, dialog - and taking me right along with you.

“A student interrupted to say something like: “Don’t you realize that they don’t have any choice? The system is rigged against them.”

By then I’d had it. These 17 year old kids sound like nine year olds. I was ready to bite their heads off. Apparently, you’d had your fill too.

"And that’s when I said affirmative action wouldn’t have succeeded when a super-smart black kid got into Harvard, it would have succeeded when a dumb black kid got into Harvard because his black grandfather had gone there, gotten rich and left Harvard a lot of money. Because that’s how people like George Bush got into college.)”

Those girls took your comment personally, they thought you were talking about them. And they were right. You were talking about them. If they’d been anything but rich white kids, they’d have pushed back like tigers. But these were rich white kids and rich white kids never grow up. They are perpetual children; dependent, fragile, needy and given to tantrums.

These girls are accustomed to examining “others” and pronouncing their findings from on high. But you, mister experience-hardened science writer flipped the script. You put them under the microscope and reported what you saw – in your subject.

You went about it indirectly, but they heard what you said, they know what you meant. You told them “they” have choices and they will never forgive you. Somewhere in the upper echelons of the New York Times, I smell a Daddy Rat.

Free advice for the young. If you want a great mentor, find a curmudgeon.