Indecision?

Faced with dozens, even hundreds, of choices every day, anyone can get flustered once in awhile.

But for some, making up one's mind is no small task.

Some Harvard student say decision-making is a chore. They have the same decisions to make as the rest of us, but for them making a choice is just a little harder.

A routine trip to the supermarket becomes a Homeric journey. And choosing a course can resemble a Herculean feat.

For suffers of indecisiveness, even the most routine situation can present a baffling conundrum.

John A. Bresman '95-'96 may well be the poster-boy of indecision.

His condition has even brought him a bit of fame.

During his sophomore year, the Quincy House resident was invited by the Freshman Dean's Office to make an official presentation about how he can never make up his mind at a gathering during parent's weekend.

"My role was to be the comic relief," Bresman says of his experience on the panel. "[I told] how I talked to different professors, the assistant dean of students..., the special concentrations office."

Bresman, a first semester senior, told the audience about his struggle to declare a major (he currently has switched five different times).

Now, Bresman says he has wound up in the government department "by default." He is still approached by undergraduates who remember from the panel.

"Along the way, my various electives have worked to fit the government requirement," says Bresman, whose majors have included history of science, social studies, biological anthropology and biology.

Bresman says his inability to choose a major stems, in large part, from his interest in several different courses.

Indeed, while many undergraduates with wide-ranging interests might shop as many as 10 or even 15 courses, Bresman routinely samples up to 36 courses at the start of one semester.

And he enrolls in at least 10 of them well after the end of shopping week.

"I play a game with the registrar," he says. "It leads to great sectioning problems [because] I don't know how my schedule is going to look until well into the course."

But for Bresman, who is now trying to settle on a thesis topic, indecision goes well beyond academics and choosing majors.

"I have that typical indecisiveness," says Bresman. "Supermarkets are very problematic for me...they are fun on several levels."

While Bresman says he enjoys the challenge of trying to choose from the various types of foods, he is often distracted by his fascination with watching elderly people shop.

Categories of Indecision

Bresman's case may seem somewhat extreme, but his dilemma is shared by scores of undergraduates who spend the first few months of each semester filling out add/drop forms and trying to return books to the Coop.

And the breeding ground of indecision may very well be the Yard, where hundreds of first-year struggle with majors, housing and Room 13's eternal question, "Was I the mistake?"

One embarrassed, advanced standing first-year, who could not decide if he wanted his name to appear in this article, said that in his first two semesters, he has already dropped four classes and nearly declared four different majors--he even considered taking three of them together as one big joint concentration.

But he says the problem has not been indecision. Instead, it has been difficult for him to realize his own limitations.

"I found out I was crashing, it was really bad," says the disgruntled first-year. "I had no idea what college would be like, [and] the other first-years seem to know exactly what they want."

Originally, the first-year had intended to tri-major in engineering, economics and East Asian studies. He has since settled on economics, with Japanese as a sub-field.

"I lost my confidence, I got blown away but I'm getting better now," says the Yardling, who is currently taking five classes and wishes he could be taking a sixth.

"It's shopping period still, isn't it?" he asks innocently.

Fellow first-year Juliet Lee says that upon arriving in Cambridge, she, too, out of place.

"Everyone else here seems to know what their doing," says Lee. "Sometimes it takes me some time to decide what it takes to make a decision."

'Suck It Up, Kid'

Bresman blames part of the difficulty of making up one's mind on the indecision he says is imposed on students by Harvard itself.

"They want you to pick a concentration at the end of freshman year, but they included me in a panel which seems to say its okay [to be indecisive]," he says. "[The attitude is] suck it up, kid, and make up your mind."

A large part of the problem comes from thinking too much about details like classes, says Bresman.

When he ran the Hillel "assassin" game last semester, Bresman would often spend hours contemplating the validity of kills, often holding up the two week-long game.

The Road to Recovery

With indecision running rampant through Harvard's hallowed halls, many harried undergraduates say they have begun to seek out a solution.

Sara S. Krause '97 is a crew on the sailing team, and in the past, her indecision has caused her to accidentally ram other boats.

"There are too many good arguments for everything so I can't make up my mind," Krause says. "Thoughts roll around in your head and you get different points of view as you go."

But Krause says she has been positively influenced by her more decisive classmates.

"I guess it helps just because you're surrounded by completely decisive people so it starts to rub off," she says.

So Krause now makes up her mind by acting on her last thought and never re-thinking her decisions.

"I waffle back and forth a lot, [but] when it comes down to the line, you figure you have to choose," Krause says.

Like Krause, Kenton H. Beerman '98 says he has also been working to cure himself of his problem with indecision.

"I always outline for myself a variety of options of things to do, and I can never make up my mind which things to do," Beerman said. "I'm on the road to recovery."

Beerman says he has dropped his shortlived dream of being a pre-med after a brief experience with Chemistry 10. Beerman is planning to concentrate in economics or government. But he's still not sure.

Andrina D. Ngo '96, a biology pre-med, says she was discouraged at first by the stigma that pre-meds are work-a-holics who use four-color clicker pens and hang out in Cabot Library.

"Most people are undecided in the beginning because there is a lot of stigma against pre-meds," said Ngo. "I was in [one professor's] office and there was another guy there [and] the professor asked him what [he] is planning to do."

The two got into a debate about getting an M.D. or M.D. Ph.D.

All this, while most undergraduates are still struggling to decide how they are going to fill their "Literature and Arts C" requirement.

The much maligned core, however, has also been a source of student indecision, according to Bresman.

The core, which is intended to broaden the approaches to knowledge of undergraduates, may have actually done more harm than good in some cases.

"I've liked my core classes," says Bresman, "But it has lent itself to my indecision."

Bresman says that after taking a core class on Jerusalem, he almost went on an archaeological expedition with the professor of the class.

"That's crazy, I almost went on an archaeological dig and at the last minute I went to summer school," Bresman said.

Beyond Harvard

While choosing courses and thesis topics may be a source of angst for seniors like Bresman, the prospect of actually getting a job is often beyond comprehension for the indecisive.

"I don't want to go out in the world and get a job, but the academic thing is getting boring," Bresman said. "The idea that in order to survive you have to exchange your services for little green pieces of paper [which you use] to buy tangerines...is silly."