Sinking in The Big Pond

Harvard tells you when it takes you that there was a good reason for admitting you, that the admissions office doesn't make mistakes, that everything is going to be just fine. You're assured Harvard's certain that you will get the most out of your education and the University community will get the most out of you. A match made in heaven. Of course, the general premise Harvard is working on is that if you were a high school star (and chances are excellent that you were) you will be a college crackerjack. Harvard prides itself on being an academic hothouse which offers all its promising seedlings the best environment for them to bloom in. Yet there were some that didn't quite take root.

Like Jeff McConnell '75. What Jeff wanted was time--time to think, time to read, most importantly, time to write. Even though he'd done well in high school--fourth in his class, newspaper editor--high school activities didn't seem quite as important as the time he spent on his writing, working at his own rate. When he came to Harvard four years ago, he failed Expository Writing.

"I was angry that I had to take it. I never wrote much in high school for teachers. I always wrote for myself. I was under pressure in expos courses to get weekly assignments in on time. I wasn't used to that kind of pressure. In high school I could always get extensions. I just can't write under pressure. So I failed the course."

Things only got worse when he tried to make it up that spring. "Everyone in the course had failed expos the semester before. The teacher handed out a mimeo with 21 pointers on how to write a good composition. I thought it was below my dignity so I got angry."

Faced with the prospect of failing again and being asked to leave, he considered withdrawing. A visit to Bok clinched his decision.

"One Saturday morning I went to speak to Bok. We got into a philosophical discussion on the role of the University. I said I didn't think Harvard was responsive to its artists. It didn't give them time for themselves. It was always a grind. He said one should be able to partake of Harvard when one is willing and ready to. I saw that as my key to leave."

Howard Ross '78 (not his real name) had always gotten easy As when he wasn't doing stuff as president of his class and chairman of his school social service organization. When he came to Harvard, he decided to drop the extra-curriculars and concentrate on his academics, to really soak in the "atmosphere which puts an emphasis on the intellectual."

One way to do that was to take Soc Sci 2 and Nat Sci 90, a couple of famous, high-pressured Gen Ed courses--famous outside Harvard for their academic rigor and excellence, famous inside Harvard for their tendency to destroy freshman year.

"The first two months I studied constantly. I'd been going full steam and getting B+s. The first thing I did was slack off on my work. My grades in Soc Sci 2 slowly dropped down to C+s."

Howard's disappointment at getting B grades for A efforts was compounded by his loss of interest in those subjects.

"After the first term, I was finished. By the middle of freshman year, my interests had changed. I didn't want to know any more about 'Western Thoughts and Institutions' or 'Space, Time and Motion.' But the professors wouldn't let me drop them. I felt I'd derived out of them all I was going to derive. That was partly why my grades dropped."

Although Howard escaped common freshman year doubts about his intelligence, the competition took its toll.

"I am pretty loose about grades but they are valuable for your own self-esteem. If someone gives you a B, he's saying you're just not as smart as the next guy who gets an A. It hurts. It's not particular to Harvard. It's the way the grade system works."

Gary Shaffer '75 simply wasn't used to people like his roommate, Bill. Where Gary came from, he was the best. At Harvard, he lived with someone better.

"Bill was exceptionally bright, even for Harvard. He was brighter than most professors I had. Almost everyone who met him had difficulties dealing with him. Living with Bill had a negative effect on my performance. I felt inferior. Like when I had brainstorms, ideas I thought were really special. I would go talk to Bill about them. He would give me arguments for and against starting from the 12th century. It was demoralizing."

There was also the problem of Bill's mysticism, which forced Gary to rethink the values he'd been fed by his "aetheistic, middle-class background."

"Bill read science fiction and believed in God. I thought that people who believed in God were superstitious maniacs and people who read science fiction just didn't know better. It took a while to assimilate that style of thinking but now I'm thinking of going to Divinity School."

At the Horace Mann School in New York, Jeff Barclay '76 was a public figure; a teenage Midas whose touch turned activities into achievements. That was part of the problem.

"I was confident to the point of being overconfident and that meant trouble. Lots of praise in high school makes you believe you're good and yet it makes you suspicious of your glory. I wanted to believe I was hot shit but part of me believed that it was nonsense."

Jeff had always nurtured the idea of going into academics, maybe hitting the big time with a tenured appointment at Harvard. Freshman year turned out to be an academic disaster which threw his dream into confusion.

"Freshman year I decided to turn totally toward academics. That isn't where my strength lies. Three years later I still don't want to believe it. I've tried to be more of an academic. But I wasn't in love with the work. It made me wonder why I was here. Not to be facetious, that took up a lot of my time. I was confused. I turned inwards. I read a lot, did a lot of stuff by myself, basically turned off my public image."

By the end of freshman year, Jeff was beset by conflicts. He wasn't sure he could shine at Harvard like he had in high school and that scared him.

"The fact that I can hold unrealistic expectations about myself and not live up to them scared me."

What's more, he was no longer so sure that he wanted the laurels Harvard said he should want.

"Part of me is fed up with the pettiness here. I became obsessed with thinking in terms of power and prestige. I began to hate it and the part of me involved with it."

Patsy McDermott '75 came from a Catholic high school that didn't send people to places like Harvard. Some went to UMass or small New England colleges, some got jobs, others got married.

"I never expected to come to Radcliffe. I applied as a joke. I even had eraser holes in my application."

She came from a basically working-class school that didn't worry about feeding students into the Ivies, much less prepare them for the academic pressure they would face once they got here.

"I never got challenged in high school. I just kind of breezed by. I never worked so I never knew how to study."

When Patsy tried the pre-med route, her better prepared competition intimidated her into mediocrity.

"In science, no matter how hard you try not to compete, there's always the curve. I couldn't compete with my image of Harvard people. I figured if I don't try, I don't have to test myself. It's stultifying."

Patsy's academic problems were not due to dealing with college work, per se, but to attending such a high-powered university.

"In another school, I think I would have aced my courses. But if I do badly, I might as well do badly here because it looks better."