Reflections on Freshman Year: What Harvard Has Really Taught Me
By Anna Yeung
The Great Equalizer
“It’s always a kick to see trust fund babies deal with sharing a room half the size of my single,” a friend once noted.
I first noticed the breadth of Harvard’s financial aid initiative through the housing lottery. Legacies end up bunking with first-generation college students, and globetrotting internationals with students from rural America. In the eyes of the the powers that be charge of sorting out rooming assignments, we are all one and the same. Dorm assignments constitute some of the first steps to accomplishing what I believe to be the real mission of Harvard—to take a group of promising kids from the full spectrum of backgrounds and in four years equip them all with the skills of any Harvard graduate.
As for our Puritan Heritage
Old John Harvard would roll in his grave if he heard of Debauchery, Mather Lather, or Sweet and Nasty. Harvard students make it a point to epitomize the term “Work Hard, Play Hard.” Before coming to Harvard, I expected the ingredients of a “good” Friday night for most Harvardians to involve finishing a math problem set three days early. In fact, I have found that the real ingredients are a decent iTunes mix amplified with a killer bass, plenty of eager freshmen in sketchy unlit rooms, and an ironic “You Must be 21 to Drink” sign hung in a lonely corner.
Contempt for our Puritan heritage was exactly the type of behavior that caused former Harvard President Increase Mather to leave us and aid in establishing Yale. Good riddance.
Life Beyond Ec10 and LifeSci
Yes, there’s more to life after Harvard than just Medical School and I-Banking. But explain that to 95% of the people who shake their heads in disbelief when I tell them that I am in neither LifeSci or Ec10. The confident 95% are sure that I’m completely wasting a Harvard education since I’m not headed in those two career tracks. For my part, I’m convinced the real tragedy is the guy in Annenberg who rattles off a well-meditated list of firms he intends on working for after graduation. Having endured an average thirteen years of schooling to get here, I would hope that you have some originality and potential in you. Why limit yourself to Wall Street when you can be anywhere else in the world?
For those of you that dare to defy expectations, I salute you. Stand strong in defending the practical applications of a History and Literature or Visual and Environmental Studies degree in the real world to anyone and everyone.
The Weight of the H-Bomb
Come on, admit it, we’ve all tried using it to see the effect. But it’s not just about the name of the institution. It’s also the people that make up the name. It’s a well established fact that using the H-Bomb itself is pretentious and makes you look like an arrogant prick. Instead, students will use the diluted derivatives of it which may be equally or even more pretentious, dropping lines like “I played on the same B-ball court as Obama” or “Thoreau lived in my building before he moved to his pond”. That said, walking through the Yard on a rare sunny day, it’s those same lines that remind me of how blessed I am to be here and inspire me to keep typing at 4am in Lamont try to live up to the legacies of fellow Harvardians.
So long as I survive the next three years.