A Major Decision

DO YOU know those decisions that you regret for years afterwards? The ones that wake you up in the middle of the night with a gnawing sense that life could have been completely different?

Attention first-year students: Your choice of concentration could be one of those decisions.

With two months left at Harvard-Radcliffe, I've been in my current concentration for almost two years. I am proud of this fact, because I switched concentrations officially three times, and spiritually at least 20 more. I speak with authority: investigate your choice thoroughly.

My theory behind my present happiness is a small, intimate, flexible department. Small departments offer professors you see regularly and even speak to. They give you the opportunity to change your mind for or against writing a thesis, and sometimes they provide you with your own mailbox. Best of all, they want you.

So don't feel pressured to join a "prestigious" and large honors concentration. Doing so could be a terrible mistake.

FIRST-YEAR students choosing concentrations in the coming week face more than a tough decision. Some may have to deal with presumptuous application questions, awkward essays and even an interview--all to decide three years in advance whether to write a thesis.

Most of us probably thought that after a horrible senior year of high school, we could avoid the application process for a while. Few of us bargained for competition to get into seminars or other limited courses. Fewer imagined we'd have to be selected for the concentration of our choice.

The popularity of these honors concentrations is a little odd. Most do not offer their own courses, forcing you to take classes in other departments, the same classes that your "regular" friends are taking. You can still graduate with honors in a regular concentration, and you are not guaranteed honors in an honors concentration.

Despite this fact, many first-year students fall into the trap of the supposedly prestigious concentration. Most honors concentrations are bigger than their regular counterparts, and at Harvard, bigger is rarely better.

In History and Literature, for example, almost every tutorial is taught by a graduate student. If you choose to major in Romance Languages and Literatures, all of your tutorials and most of your sections are taught by professors. French and Spanish offer "studies" or "civilization" options that give you as much or greater course flexibility as History and Literature. With few other concentrators around, you can reasonably hope that members of the faculty might even know you by name.

Social Studies, like History and Literature, is a direct route to a nagging absence of professors in your life. If you can wade through the silliness of the Sociology-Social Studies debate, you might discover that most social science departments do offer both an interdisciplinary track and a social theory component. Anthropology and Sociology and even the larger History and Government Departments all count related courses for concentration credit.

Of course, some honors concentrations do offer special programs that are genuinely different from what you might get in other disciplines. Women's Studies gave my roommate individual tutorials, a comprehensive introductory course open to non-concentrators and enormous freedom and flexibility. Seniors have at least one professor reading their theses. There are only about 15 Women's Studies concentrators per class, and the small department allows for plenty of intra-departmental friendliness.

Concentrators in History and Science and in Literature also take classes from their own departments. These are bigger concentrations, but their specialties outweigh the disadvantages of size. History and Science allows the equivalent of a triple major, combining courses in sciences, history and history of science. The Literature Department offers its own theory classes, and counts any class in any literature for concentration.

Some of us may be addicted to applying for things. Maybe we think a department that will accept us, no questions asked, is no good. Honors concentrations play on this mindset by making it part of their appeal.

Did you choose Harvard-Radcliffe just because it chose you? Not because it was the best school for you, but because it was the hardest to get into? Well, now you're here. Don't let the lure of a concentration's selection process ruin your academic life.

And remember, you can always change your mind.