Dealing With Rejection and the Lottery

I felt like Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, hoping as hard as I could that somehow--against all odds--I'd get lucky and get something I wanted badly.

Charlie opened his candy bar and got a prized golden ticket which allowed him into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. We opened our letter from the housing office--and we got Currier.

The odds seemed about the same. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie was after one of five tickets scattered around the entire world. In the housing lottery, we had number 426 and we wanted Winthrop.

"This has got to be just a bad dream," one of my future roommates said.

"At least I'm sophomore standing," another said.

"I think I'm going to throw up," said a third.

MY first reaction was anger. It didn't seem fair-- though I knew the lottery was the only fair way to house everyone--that some people got to live wherever they wanted.

We had spent days guessing and second-guessing and weighing our priorities. Would Winthrop make it to the end of the first round? Would people be scared to put down Leverett because it seemed so popular? Would athletes really be discouraged from putting down Kirkland? Or would people be fooled into believing that this would actually make it easier to get in?

In any case, we all knew that the one thing that we absolutely did not want was to end up at Currier. It has neither the advantage of location nor the appeal of newly renovated rooms.

For me, the real sting was knowing that I wouldn't live at the river. The strong sense of tradition here is one of the things that drew me to Harvard. Where else can you find dorms that housed soldiers from the Continental Army? Where else do students dig for artifacts to learn about the lifestyles of fellow alumni?

The river houses, of course, don't go back to colonial times, but they still represent the same kind of tradition. Georgian houses like Lowell and Eliot with their courtyards and clock-towers just aren't built anymore. By not living in one of the river houses, I am some-how missing out on part of the Harvard experience.

AFTER receiving the news, it took anyone who asked where I would be living next year. But the news has slowly sunk in. I'm not angry anymore.

People have been telling me that Currier is really a good house despite its reputation. "I hear that there are a lot of really cool people who are living there," they say. One hopes they are right.

I can't say Currier was even close to my first choice, but I'm going to make the best of it. Charlie and his family were much worse off than I, and they got along in good spirits.