Word: harvardness
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Photo by Jessie J. Jiang/The Harvard Crimson...
...decided not to attend the Senior Class Champagne Brunch this past month because I remembered the experience of eating in Annenberg vividly. During Senior Dinner Swap, another event designed to memorialize a Harvard experience, I relived standing before endless rows of tables, green tray in hand and no friend in sight. I thought that I would be able to console myself by buying a Class of 2010 coffee mug, but it had been sold out. I realized then that the senior class officers weren't kidding: the other senior items—those purchasable memories—were...
Each senior event, carefully designed to encapsulate a memory, was going to disappear faster than used textbooks at the Coop. Memories were going to sell quickly, because each senior who recognized that his time at Harvard was valuable and that it would end soon, would rush to eat in every dining hall, attend every “last lecture,” and buy every item of senior class merchandise. During the weekend of the Champagne Brunch, I realized that hoarding and buying Harvard memories in the form of extracurriculars, events, and mugs is misguided...
Even if I could defy the laws of physics and participate in every Harvard extracurricular, I wouldn't want to, because it would mean straying from the extracurricular niche I had found and loved after months of wandering. It would mean denying the value of having a number of extracurricular options so dizzying that it forces us to make choices and find our place here. After speaking with Daily Princetonian editors at the Georges Conference last month, I learned that several of us carve out our college niches by remaining loyal to the activities we loved...
...memories that I had only to reframe and reshape in order to treasure, I didn’t need to conform to Harvard’s culture of shopping and buying. There was no need to wrap up memories in every senior event because being human at Harvard means finding one’s interests and values while realizing the limits of time. It means giving up some events and activities to make room for others and acknowledging that what one has is valuable...