Putting the Pieces of College Life Together

College.

It was college and not Harvard that struck me first. Now I know that the two are not so easily separable, but the callow youth of my first semester (I write that only half in jest) I thought that college was college and Harvard was Harvard.

It was college that struck me first, hit me in the face with something I didn't really want to see. Going to school in Massachusetts eight hours away from home and family and friends did not make me a different person. I found this out early in October, from a good teacher if not a famous one: Grays Hall, a Yard dorm. The method of instruction: I fell down the Grays Hall stairs, in front of a well populated Yard that took no notice of the first-year sprawled unceremoniously on the grass.

Lesson one: Once a klutz, always a klutz.

Amazed at this, conceding that perhaps Harvard hadn't yet touched me with its Harvard Aura, I got up and said I was fine. I was soldiering on. Wasn't that what Invincible Harvard Students did? And so, ignoring the pain in the arm on which I had fallen, I returned to my Holworthy dorm room and typed two papers. As my injured right arm weakened, my left automatically compensated--and broke down. Five days later, with both hands swollen and tender, I reported to University Health Services, wanting nothing more than a sling and a ice pack. Instead I got every student's nightmare prognosis: "You can't use your hands," the doctor told me. For how long? "It might be weeks. It might be months."

Lesson two:@#%!. There's a difference between bravery and stupidity.

On top of the requested sling and ice pack they added two wrist splints and an order to report to physical therapy and the student disability office. Scribes and voice dictation to do homework, she said. "Are you kidding?" I asked. She wasn't.

Lesson three: Love your hands.

Anything without hands takes 10 times the patience and three times the duration. I got worse before I got better. A lot worse. I almost left school. First I couldn't hold a pencil. It hurt to get dressed. Then I couldn't hold utensils at dinner. I was reduced to sandwiches. Then I couldn't lift sandwiches. Soup in a glass through a straw, I joked. It wasn't funny. The first time someone offered to feed me, I cried right in Annenberg, furtively, making like I was scratching my nose but actually sopping up tears, hoping like hell that nobody noticed. Invincible Harvard Student that I hoped to be. Ha.

Lesson four: There is no such thing as the Invincible Harvard Student.

But what I have learned to love and admire about my schoolmates is not their invincibility, but their humanity. There were my dormmates, who eagerly signed up to scribe my homework and lent me tapes and tape recorders to do homework. The senior who let me use his voice dictation software in the basement of The Crimson. The Crimson news comp director, who figured out a way for me to continue reporting. My high school friend, also a Harvard first-year, who volunteered to help me finish The Crimson's news comp. That humanity wasn't only students. Professors and teaching fellows bent over backwards to make things easier on me, arranging scribes for tests and extensions on papers. My parents loved me hard through a long distance phone connection. My brother called and listened to me yell in frustration. I'm a writer, I screamed. Where are my hands?

Which brings me to lesson five: Other people can help you only to a point. Then it's up to you.

Harvard.

In the end of the beginning, I found myself staring at my first semester grades and feeling relief. No shame. No regrets. I had passed everything, hadn't I? This was Harvard. This was Hard. These were grades without hands. It had been four months. I had learned that College was not a "for instant Happiness add water" formula. And to some degree, thank God, I had my hands back.

It was strange to once again have time, to tackle my work in earnest, not just praying to finish, but wanting to learn. I was interested--thrilled, really--with my second semester classes. I was only taken aback when I remembered that the cost of this renewed academic vigor was that hellish first semester.

But that first semester had taught me to push. It made me introduce myself to big-name professors. ("Sir--excuse me--my name is Sugi--I have a disability letter that explains everything.") I learned to triple-check everything. Sleep gained new meaning. I became the anti-procrastinator. And now that I was finally unfettered by any injury, the immense resources of the University lay before me. I didn't know where to begin.

Standard Harvard New Year's resolution: "I resolve to make use of everything available here. "You can't. It's not humanly possible. In my first year here I saw, met or was involved in an educational experience with Seamus Heaney, Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Alice Walker, Will Smith, Marisa Tomei, Ellen Goodman '63, Patricia O'Brien, Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English and American Literature and Language Patricia Powell, Elizabeth McCracken, A. Kingsley Porter University Professor Helen Vendler, W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. '60, Alphonse Flethcer Jr. University Professor Cornel West '74, Professor of Afro-American Studies and of Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of Afro-American Studies Werner Sollors and many others. And I didn't even begin to touch Harvard's vast resources.

Vast is really the most appropriate word. The only way I was able to start to comprehend the University was through my reporting for The Crimson. One of the smartest things I did first semester was cling for dear life to that Crimson comp. Not only did The Crimson enfold me in its 125-year tradition and tight-knit community, it taught me to break down the University's hugeness and address each part.

Before The Crimson, Harvard was a collection of stories floating around the dorm and among my friends. The newfound ease of getting summer jobs. Just mention the school--drop the "H-bomb," as some say. My roommate reported meeting a woman in the Square who "just collected the signatures of Harvard students. In case they became valuable later." Tourists took our pictures when we did our homework in the Yard. They videotaped the Yard squirrels. They rubbed John Harvard's foot. (Don't do that.) Domna the cafeteria checker had to forcibly usher them out of Annenberg. Ridiculous, we murmured among ourselves. Ridiculous, all of it. It's a College, after all. It's Harvard, people whispered in my ears. It's Harvard College, I retorted, feeling a bit like an animal at the zoo, biting the hands that feed me.

It's Harvard College. And The Crimson taught me that just like any other school, you have to learn how it works piece by piece. I started in the English department by declaring my concentration, and in Harvard race relations and ethnicity by becoming the Crimson beat reporter--both areas I'm looking forward to exploring more in the fall.

I'm going piece by piece from now on. Otherwise, it's like falling unexpectedly down a flight of Gray Hall stairs, hoping for a soft place to land.

--Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan '02 is a reporter and staff writer for The Crimson