Martha felt like an imposter at Harvard with so many of the super smart around her. “The importance of prestige is so overwhelming in that culture,” she said, “that people hardly look at each other, let alone their environment.”

With a few minutes before class, she visited a friend in the psych department. “My friend was in her lab, conducting an experiment that consisted of implanting wires into the brains of live rats, then making the rats swim around in a tub of reconstituted dry milk.” Why? Reasons. But the tub was a child’s swimming pool decorated in Smurfs.

Martha got to her class a couple minutes late, catching everyone’s attention as she walked in. In her book, Expecting Adam, Martha N. Beck wrote:

“Ah, Martha,” said the course instructor, “we’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was upstairs in the Psych lab, watching rats swim around in a Smurf pool.”

“I see,” said the instructor, “Yes, I believe I’ve read about that.”

A professor, one of the visiting dignitaries, chimed in. “How is Smurf’s work going?” he inquired. “I understand he’s had some remarkable findings.”

“Yes,” said a graduate student. “I read his last article.”

There was a general murmur of agreement. It seems that everyone in the room was familiar with Dr. Smurf, and his groundbreaking work with swimming rats.

. . . Comprehension blossomed in my brain like a lovely flower.

“I think,” I said solemnly, “that Smurf is going to change the whole direction of linguistic epistemology.”

They all agreed, nodding, saying things like ‘Oh, yes,’ and “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

I beamed at them, struggling desperately not to laugh. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to mock these people. I was giddy with exhilaration, because after seven years at Harvard, I was just beginning to realize that I wasn’t the only one faking it.