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A PAssage to Harvard

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paco2004  #224688  Thu, 11 May 06 11:38 PM
Hello guys

I'm still stuck to reading Washington Post's article "A Passage to Harvard", a story about a Harvard girl student who committed plagiarism in writing her teen-literature.

This question is originally given to me by a Japanese learner of English, who is trying to read the article. The question is about how we should read the article's last sentence:
And Viswanathan, perhaps, has learned a lesson that the admissions industrial complex does its best to obscure: There are more things to cry about than not getting into Harvard.
What troubles us here is how to grammatically parse the phrase after the colon: "There are more things to cry about than getting into Harvard".  Is the phrase working as the object of the verb "obscure"? Or is it a phrase put appositively to "a lesson" (the object of "has learned) ?

paco

  
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MrPedantic  #224691  Thu, 11 May 06 11:43 PM

Hello Paco

I would take it as a description of the "lesson": "there are more [important] things to cry about [in this world] than not getting into Harvard".

MrP

  
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paco2004  #224692  Thu, 11 May 06 11:47 PM

Hi MrP

Thank you for the quickest reply. I see. Thank you a lot.

paco  

  
Anonymous  #268650  Mon, 18 Sep 06 05:15 AM

Hello Paco!

Very pleased to make your acquaintance. . I am Vietnamese.

Hoang Nam

  
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