Word: goode
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...institution Harvard developed to make up for the impersonality of its mass-market courses. Most big courses you take will split into groups of 20-or-so people under the tutelage of a graduate student, who will most likely bore you for an hour a week. There are good section eaders, and if you're lucky enough to get one it could best the best experience of your Harvard education. But don't expect to find one easily or frequently...
Your work in humanities and social science courses will consist almost entirely of reading books, which can't be too bad, and writing papers, which can be good or bad depending on how intriguing the topic is and how constructive the comments you receive are. But in most cases your grade will be based on you performance on a three-hour final exam. In other words, many of the students who do well in these courses pull it off by doing nothing all semester and then spending the two-week Reading Period doing just that to prepare themselves...
Science students live on another planet. Their courses are incredibly rigorous; if you don't keep up with the work every week, you'll fall behind your classmates. And since the courses are graded with fancy scientific Gaussian bell curves--which rate your work not only on how good it is, but on how well others are doing--those classmates may be glad to see you falter...
Most students fall in the middle of these extremes, however, placing academics in a central and important place in their lives but not letting them edge out the other things that make Harvard an attractive place. And there are good professors and good departments here, if you're persistent enough to find them. But you're much more likely to remember the people you knew and the things you did for yourself than the hours spent learning things you probably soon forgot
...will probably hear Registration referred to as a "zoo." Ah yes, but in most zoos you can but popcorn and candy and have a reasonably good time. In this zoo, you are the animals. True, you must wait in line, which is an indignity rarely bestowed on your average giraffe. But once inside, weird people try to do weird things to you. Like get you to settle outstanding term bill balances, denoted by the infamous "Red Dot" of measles fame. And multitudes of undergraduate organizations will try to solicit...