Advance to Go, Collect $200?

Harvard is insane. Yeah, yeah, if you are an upperclassman, you're saying to yourself, "I already know that." But if you are a first-year like I am, you are bumbling along, discovering this reality for yourself.

How do I mean that Harvard is crazy?--advanced standing, pure and simple. The program began in the 1950s in order to allow students with equivalent college credit to graduate from Harvard in three years. While approximately 40 percent of the 650 eligible students intially accept advanced standing, only 30 to 35 students each year actually take full advantage of it and graduate early. I am beginning to understand why this number is so small.

Like other members of the class of 2000, I am eligible for advanced standing. Hark, I hear my dead certainty breathing again. Very recently, I was certain that I would opt to participate. Now, I'm not so sure. This is not the first decision in my life about which I have wavered. Let me tell you, when it comes to decision-making, I think long and hard.

By February 5, I need to accept or decline. The once distant deadline is now approaching at the speed of light. The option to agree is seductive. I dream of spending a semester in Washington working for Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott (R-MS), or touring Europe. Whether or not my dream is feasible is another issue. The whole idea would then be perfect--seven semesters of academic study, one of real life experience.

The utopian scene closes at this point of my autobiography. For in order to arrive in Washington, I need to be thinking like an upperclassman, and as we have already established, I am a first-year who is still discovering the Harvard campus. I need to focus. I need a vision of what my time here is going to be like, what I am living for. At this point, I have neither.

The worst part for me about this decision is having to select a concentration because I would like to wander a bit through the halls of academia. "Clueless" is a word that only begins to describe me in selecting a topic area in which I will invest half of my Harvard courses taking. I love literature, art, history and languages. My issue is being uncertain about where I fit in within the departmental structure. Do I take a major I will enjoy, or one that is practical? Should I concentrate in a subject area that is easy for me and in which I am well-grounded, or one with which I will struggle and which is entirely unfamiliar?

I am unsure whether I am mature enough to make this decision. My evolution as an individual will no doubt introduce me to new interests and people, as it has already done. Learning Chinese history for the first time this semester has opened my eyes to the world of the East and an entirely new weltanschauung. I expect that other Harvard courses will do the same. For this reason, I am hesitant to select a concentration at this point. I am not sure that the senior me will have the same interests as the first-year me. I could be hit by lighting. I could become a Democrat. Maybe my evolution won't be that extreme, but I don't plan to leave Harvard as the same person who hopped between activites during Freshman Week.

My interests are so broad and there are so many fields I would love to explore, but, unfortunately, Harvard does not have a major/minor system. By opting to supposedly graduate in three years, I might stunt my growth. Harvard does not seem concerned about that. The system does not fret about developmentally stunted students. In this way, we are antithetical to Brown which encourages its student body to indulge in its pangs to learn about road-less-traveled type subjects. Columbia is also very different; the student body spends the first two years learning a highly structured Core and only later decides upon a major which consumes only one quarter of its courseload.

Harvard forces students to select early in their academic careers. Even if I do not accept advanced standing, I will have to name a subject area to which I will devote the next three years of my life. It feels a bit premature. However, I am heartened by the thought that my dilemma is one that many classes of Harvard have faced and overcome.

Melissa Rose Langsam, a first-year in Hurlbut Hall, has finally opted to take advanced standing in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.