Coming to Terms With Harvard

I sat at dinner the other night with my mother and a friend and checked off the litany of reasons for not liking Harvard: Section sizes are too big, professors care only about their research, safety precautions are ineffective to nonexistent, the advising system is lousy--and don't even get me started on the weather.

After I went through the list (and I suspect it would be hard to find many undergraduates who disagree with me), I asked my mother for the umpteenth time why I hadn't gone to Stanford. Her response: "Because you wouldn't be as happy there as you are here."

She is right, of course; I am happy here. But that's a fact which is easy to forget.

I remember the day the Harvard acceptance letter came. My dad stood on the porch, nervously holding a very thin envelope (we were both too scared to realize early acceptances wouldn't come in fat envelopes).

When I opened the letter, Dad and I jumped around the house screaming. It's a minor miracle we neither broke anything nor scared the neighbors.

I was proud of what I had accomplished, proud to be going to HARVARD. This fact was announced to anyone who listened.

Soon, though, that excitement gave way to the following conversation, as I tried to avoid "dropping the H-bomb":

Politely Inquiring Person: So, where are you going to school in the fell?

Me: Massachusetts.

PIP: Where?

Me: Boston.

PIP: Boston University?

Me: No, actually in Cambridge.

PIP: Where?

Me: Uh, Harvard.

PIP: Oh.

Conversion stops dead. Since that first summer I've learned to just say that, yes, I do go to B.U. It's far easier than dealing with the cold reaction to the H-word I so reluctantly say. My cousins wear Harvard sweatshirts more often than I do.

This Phenomenon is not unique to undergraduates. One professor told my class this spring that he really prefers associating with his graduate school peers rather than linking himself to his Harvard College class.

Somewhere in the midst of it all we've forgotten that there really are good reasons to be proud of being Harvard students.

There are those professors who care just as much about teaching as about research, as much about our learning as their own. (I had two this spring alone.) And there are teaching fellows who are genuinely interested in undergraduates and work hard to effectively convey the material. (I had two this past fall.)

Where else but Harvard can you go hear speeches by the leaders of this and most other nations, the major players in film, TV and music and the top journalists and authors every single night of the week?

The number of doors the Harvard name--by its very essence both a recommendation and a connection-can open is simply amazing.

The freedom we have to run our student organizations is invaluable. The Crimson is completely independent from the University. And despite months of hoopla, students at Phillips Brooks house Association have remarkable autonomy.

And finally, though it's a cliche, there are the people. I have friends doing ground-breaking scientific research, travelling to distant lands to save the world and touring with major orchestras.

There are just as many--if not more-reasons to be proud to be here as there are to wish we were at Stanford or Brown or Duke or Rice. And yet we're still ashamed to be at the school--or to admit we're at the school--that U.S. News and World Report consistently names the best in the nation.

I'm certainly not calling for an explosion of school spirit--say a flamboyant angry pilgrim who jumps on the football field in the middle of The Game. If I wanted Big 10 style antics, I would have gone to the University of Michigan.

But I can try to recapture the excitement I felt that afternoon in December of 1992. I can be proud to be among the best and brightest. I can not be ashamed to utilize the connections the Harvard name offers. As I approach my senior year, I can try not to dwell on what I don't like, and try to pay more attention to the good things.

Although I can't promise to stop playing the H-bomb game, I can stop saying that I go to Boston University. And I can be proud to, finally, say I go to Harvard-regardless of how anyone reacts.

Elizabeth T. Bangs '97 is associate managing editor of The Crimson.