Staring at the Ceiling

A few weeks ago, an article ran in The Crimson entitled "Eight Days A Week: Students Do It ALL" (News, Feb. 27). The article was about people who are really, really busy. The first woman interviewed, for example, takes six classes, audits another six, spends 40 hours a week just attending lectures and sections, works for a professor and is learning to play the guitar. Others edit student publications, teach sections for computer science courses, play in orchestras and jet-set around the world--all at the same time. And lest you hope that they have at least sacrificed fun and friendship for all that achievement, each student's description ends with a firm quote to the contrary: "I make sure I go out a couple times a week." "I'm adamant that I have a social life while I'm here." "When I'm having fun, I have fun intensively." One mentions a girlfriend. Another mentions a fiance.

We all know people like them. There's the girl who's taking the same four classes that we are, plus two more, plus holding down a job--and, of course, she's getting married next week. Or the guy who's finishing up his thesis while directing a play and running his own nonprofit organization-and occasionally lobbying on Capitol Hill. They are the Supermen and Wonderwomen. We can't be jealous of them, because they're always so pleasant. Publicly, we say they're "amazing." Privately, we show the article to our roommates and tell each other that these people must be psychotic. But secretly, we look at our own schedules and think, "What am I doing wrong?"

Among undergraduates, keeping busy has become a kind of contest. "I got three hours of sleep last night." "Oh yeah? Well, I didn't sleep at all last night." "Oh yeah? Well, I haven't slept since high school." "Oh yeah? Well, I don't even have eyelids." Time, we are told, should be spent doing things that build our minds and our resumes. If we find ourselves in a semester where all we are doing is minimal schoolwork, we feel aimless, identity-less. If we aren't already contributing hundreds of hours to some kind of project, our Superman friends try to bully us into stage-managing their phone-a-thons. Most busy undergrads claim that they enjoy the activities that they pursue instead of sleep. How very convenient. That way, they can work and have fun, all at the same time. I would imagine that most of us enjoy the things we do--we wouldn't have chosen them otherwise. But is pursuing an endless stream of activities really a substitute for having fun?

Hey, wait! you say. I'm not like the rest of those workaholics. I have fun. I go to see plays. I hear speakers. I attend concerts. I read poetry for pleasure. I flip through newspapers. I exercise!

Yet let's take a look at these spare-time activities. Notice how closely they resemble school. You are hearing lectures, reading books, keeping up with current events, even keeping yourself physically educated. Sure, you may be having fun. But you are also "enriching yourself," thus justifying such a significant expenditure of free time. Delightful as these activities may be, they are still useful, productive, or at the very least, "rewarding." They are not the same as, say, playing card games. Or going window-shopping. Or re-reading old mail. Or going for a walk--not jogging, not power-walking, but just a pointless walk. Or talking with friends in the dining hall for an extra two hours. Or reading Cosmopolitan. Or playing "Doom."

These more leisurely activities not only can't go on a resume, but they don't even add anything to our personal lives. They won't give us things to say at a job interview or enrich our aesthetic repertoire or help us lose weight. They're just fun. But more often than not, when we sit down with a trashy novel or an old magazine, our enjoyment is accompanied by an unmistakable sense of guilt. We aren't having fun--we're "procrastinating." We're "wasting time." There is no such thing as free time anymore: not because we're so busy, but because the time is not really free. Unless we spend our time working to improve ourselves, we pay for it in guilt.

Some people have managed to conjure up a balance between work and fun--or, worse, to make fun a priority. These are the people who hang out at bars or clubs on weeknight, play pool incessantly in the House basement, listen to pop music and watch reruns on TV. Yet while such choices are ours to make, these people are publicly derided and we all know it. Last semester, in the same space where the "Eight Days a Week" article appeared, The Crimson ran an article on "slackers" at Harvard (News, Oct.24). Despite a remarkably similar subject--surveying unusual students and asking them about the choices they've made--the article on slackers is prefaced by a series of remarks attempting to explain the slackers' behavior, including analyses from Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis '70 and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III. Of course, no such explanations precede the descriptions of students who "do it all." In the article on students who don't do anything, the word "slacker" could have easily been replaced with the word "sinner" without changing the article in the least--in fact, the article was even titled "True Confessions of a Harvard Slacker." Even more telling is the fact that while the six students in "Eight Days a Week" are identified by name, class year, concentration and House, the two "slackers" interviewed did so anonymously.

I'm not criticizing the Supermen and Wonderwomen for their choices. Nor do I believe that students avoid taking advantage of the resources the College offers. All I'm saying is that those of us who enjoy playing "Doom" shouldn't feel like sinners. If you aren't the kind of person who loves a particular activity enough to dedicate large chunks of your time to it, then trying to follow the Superman model can be a super-efficient way to make yourself miserable--if not from spending too much time on something you don't like, then from feeling guilty and inadequate for not having such an easy-to-focus passion. Believe it or not, it is possible to achieve great things while working fewer than 100 hours a week. But it's a lot easier to think about quality over quantity once you stop comparing yourself to everybody else.

A certain quote in "Eight Days a Week" was particularly poignant for me. "I try to spend my time efficiently," one of the Wonderwomen in the article says. "I don't spend a lot of time sitting around, looking at the ceiling." The ceiling of my bedroom is covered with glow-in-the-dark stars. Two weeks ago, I spent the majority of an entire evening looking at the ceiling. I'm not going to try to explain to you why this was useful, or productive, or beneficial or enriching. To be quite honest, it was completely pointless. The next day, someone asked what I had done that night. I answered, "Nothing." I have no regrets.

Dara Horn '99 is a literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.