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Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.

I was one of those dorky kids who'd wanted to go to Harvard since the fifth grade.

I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, because I realized I couldn't get tenure at a research university.

I wanted to be a teacher.

I didn't get on a plane until I was 23, after I left Oxford and was teaching at Lucy Clayton Secretarial College in London.

In the spring of 1959, I received an offer of a professorship at Harvard, which I accepted with alacrity since I wanted to be near my family and since the chemistry department at Harvard was unsurpassed.

I planned on being an English teacher, but I don't know where that went.

In 1990, I was an undergraduate freshman archeology major sneaking over to the English building and unearthing an amazing repository of books I'd never even suspected. By 1998, I'd have my Ph.D.

I didn't want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.