Word: expection
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...kind of talk-at least from fellow students-that the incoming freshman can expect is a lot less intimidating than Nathan would have it. I came to Harvard in the autumn of 1967 (alas, also "expectant" and "receptive"), but as I remember it my first contact with another Harvard freshman took place in the third-floor showers of Hollis Hall. (Now, don't leer; that kind of stuff you swore off in prep school, right?) Anyway, I was simply waiting for a recalcitrant shower head to let go with some hot water when I met Jed. We quickly introduced ourselves...
Anyway, the point that the whole, by-now-soggy, shower episode was leading to before it was interrupted: as an incoming freshman, you can expect to be impressed with Harvard for about two and a half weeks. Long before that time, you will have stopped comparing college boards (the other guy's are always embarrassingly higher), and by the end of your first month, you will begin to wonder how so many stupid people ever managed to get into the place. By that time, you're playing one of the freshman's more amusing games, one called...
...EITHER case, though, you'd best expect a good bit of violence. Violence, along with a cataclysmic sense of emergency, has become pretty fashionable here of late. It makes life at Harvard alternately exciting, exhausting, and intolerable. Our Harvard-in its prose and its "politics" -practices a kind of blunt, immediate violence. Over dinner we argue about movies and rock, late at night we meet over beer or dope to argue about each other, and, once our ideas have reached a state of partial articulation, we confront and demand and we curse. O-K, so maybe we're sometimes wrong...
Your freshmen year rapidly becomes nothing more than a cliche. Yet, you'll think it the best year you spent at Harvard. Which is only a measure of what you can expect during the other three...
...youngest class that we turn to fill their place; and it may not be out of the way, in this connection, to say a few words regarding the duties we expect them to perform. It becomes more evident every year that success at the bat and oar is only to be obtained by persevering and enthusiastic labor. Let no petty or local dispute interfere where the honor of the University is at stake. The careless and cynic spirit should be frowned down; and everyone should seek to contribute, in the way most suited to his abilities, to the honor...