Sowing the Seeds Of Self-Absorption

Not long ago I stood before a friend's window in Dunster House, gazing at the view of Leverett Towers and said, "God, I hate this place." My friend murmured her assent, but I think it occurred to both of us at that moment that to make such a claim was really beside the point. For whether we like Harvard or not has, on the whole, clearly been a secondary concern to the institution. Unfortunately, it's taken me the better part of three years here to make that realization. Looking back to my first year, I don't think anybody said to me. We hope you have a productive and succesful four years." In this is a crucial difference that lies at the heart of my own answer to the question posed, and which I believe lies at the heart of a larger truth about what Harvard itself is all about.

When I got into this place, I wondered why it wanted me. I reassured myself with a freshman's cuteness that "they must have so many already who have the answers that they need a few of us who are still asking questions." Of course I knew that it wasn't that simple, and I learned quickly that plenty of others around me felt the same way. And whether one felt confident or not in coming to Harvard, it seemed that most of us bought into the Harvard myth at some level, the myth that now life itself would be magically transformed and improved. I've seen those of us with particularly high expectations of the place since become the most disenchanted. Rather than being a school in which health and balance are rewarded, Harvard instead is a place where the seeds of self-absorption and personal ambition are watered, even if they were not first here sown. For all its claims of excellence, this place is definitely not excellent in human relationships. Too many of us walk through the Yard each winter with excellent minds while our hearts and souls sense the oncoming frost and are forced into hibernation, later uncannily showing signs of rebirth only as Spring Reading Period rolls around. Harvard's amoral addiction to excellence sends the message that any brilliance, however lopsided or maladjusted, ultimately matters more than the excellence some possess through their honest, if sometimes messy, search for personal meaning and lasting friendship.

Whether I like Harvard or not, then, really isn't too relevant anymore. I've long resisted the attitude, but now I've learned to regard Harvard much in the way you do an airplane that gets you where you want to go. I'm grateful and certainly respectful of the plane, but it is where I'm going that claims my emotions rather than the means by which I get there. Harvard is a place more concerned with the mechanics of the engine than in the existential significance of the journey. I've learned to look for the kinds of pleasure and promise that constitute "liking" in othe places and situations that more share my priorities.

All I've said so far would be worth less if I did not say that I've met lots of great people here, both classmates and teachers, whom I've liked a lot. I'll always remember the bittersweetness of this college, that so many people could gather in one place to do such interesting things and yet not enjoy each other more. I would have liked that day, in spite of Leverett Towers, to have looked out that Dunster window and said to my friend, "God, I love this place."

Robert Tobin '93 lives in Adams House.