One Month Down, Fourty-four to Go

On a Saturday afternoon in early fall, 10 first-years are hanging out in a fourth-floor common room in Weld Hall, chatting about extracurriculars and classes, relaxing after a football game. A few of them are lying on the floor, a couple are loafing in armchairs and the rest are lounging on a tan-and-white striped couch.

That's the couch that made them friends. On move-in day, the girls of Weld 42 couldn't get the couch up to the fourth floor, so they asked the boys in Weld 32 to help.

"We said they could sit on it," says Sarah K. Hardin '04. "They took us up on our offer."

The boys came in with the couch and have hardly left.

"They carried up the couch and they thought they had ownership rights," says Susan M. Grossman '04.

"We feel free to come in here and do what we want," says Kristopher P. "Kip" McDaniel '04, later as he lounges in a chair in the girls' room. "They don't seem to care."

The six boys from Weld 32 and the six girls from Weld 42 are no different from other first-years. They come from across the country and beyond. They have diverse interests and goals. Two months ago, none of them knew each other. Today, they're fast friends.

The Class of 2004 has finished the opening lap: Extracurriculars have been chosen, classes picked, e-mail lists joined, and the lines at Annenberg are thinning out. The initial adjustment is over, but life at college is just beginning.

This is the story of how 12 first-years have begun to come to grips with life at Harvard. In the process, they say, they've become closer than they had ever imagined.

From Two Rooms to One

No one in the two rooms can say precisely when it happened, but Weld 32 and 42 quickly became one room.

"There was some hesitation," says Eleanore C. "Ellie" Humphries '04. But "we just kind of looked around and realized there was no going back and we would be inseparable."

Anne G. Beckett '04 says she was one of the wary ones at first--she wasn't sure she wanted the boys invading her room.

"They were here and they were loud," she says. "It was hard enough adjusting to five people."

Like most of the group, Anne asked for only two or three roommates on her housing form. But after a month and a half, she says she is more than happy with a large room--and the guests from downstairs.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she says.

Things change rapidly. Two weeks ago, they knocked on each other's doors; now they don't even do that.

"We walk into each other's rooms," Ellie says. "We don't knock. We know each other's schedules."

The girls don't go downstairs nearly as much. Apparently the gender stereotypes are true--there's nothing as nice as the couch in the boys' room.

The girls' common room in Weld 42 is colorful and fully decorated. Besides the couch, the girls have a comfortable white chair. Chili and cactus lights are strung across the ceiling. Pillows, posters and fabrics are scattered all around; on one wall is an enormous Dirty Dancing poster with everything but the title in French. Opposite the poster are pictures of male stars plastered on closet doors--the "wall of beauty," they call it.

Down a floor, room 32 is still plain. At press time, they had only a couple of posters, but the nine-by-five-foot Persian tapestry that Lee H. Teslik '04 ordered over E-Bay had just arrived and been hung on the wall. The boys might get a futon soon, Teslik speculates.

Sitting on the floor--except for a big blue bean-bag, there's nowhere else to sit in their common room--Lee is working on another decoration for the bare walls. He and his roommates have acquired one of the large yellow and blue signs advertising Head of the Charles that are hung on street light poles around Cambridge--though they prefer not to say how.

Picking out loose threads from the sign, Lee reflects on his room's new friends. Just as their common room isn't in its final state, neither are their social connections.

Lee says he knows the bond with the women upstairs will be less constant as the year goes on.

"We won't spend as much time with them as we get to know more people," he says matter-of-factly.

Despite their closeness, last weekend the first-years started to talk about spending time elsewhere. It's a big University.

"We're hoping we'll branch out," says Ashwin T. Jacob '04. "We realized we were hanging out there a lot."

Settling In

In the meantime, the 12 first-years say they feel perfectly happy staying at home in Weld. The cozy feeling in their rooms has helped them feel welcome and keep their experiences in perspective.

Despite her fears, it only took Sarah a couple of weeks to lose her mystique about the Harvard name. It's just home now.

"I thought I would wake up and think, 'I am at Harvard,' but I'm at college," she says.

Not everyone worried about settling in--Oliver A. Lennox '04, for instance, says he knew he'd fit in right away. But even those who fretted before say that they already feel more comfortable than they'd ever imagined and that they don't miss their families as much anymore.

Kip describes himself as a "West Coast sort of hick"--he's from a small town in British Columbia, population 5,000--who nevertheless overcame his doubts early on.

There were "three hours of panic I'd made the wrong decision, that there was an East Coast upper crust that I couldn't work with," he says.

But those reservations were short-lived. It has helped to have a roommate like Lee, who is "laid back like me."

Before she came, Ellie felt the same way. She felt it wasn't time to for her leave home yet.

"I didn't call any of the other roommates [over the summer]," she says. "I wasn't ready to think about Harvard."

Today, Weld 42 is "definitely home." Once and a while, though, there are reminders of how different Cambridge is from Mercer Island, Wash., where she's from.

"I walked by the Faculty Club today and looked in," she says incredulously. "There were the stately professors pouring tea out of silver tea kettles."

Every so often, Ellie says she cannot help but think of her life here as more than just an ordinary college experience.

"I wake up and I mutter some obscenity and I say, 'I'm at Harvard. What am I doing here?'" she says.

Anne wasn't ready to leave for Cambridge in September either. Her roommates help her overcome her homesickness.

"We have our crying sessions," she says. "I've cried in front of them a lot."

But it's not as bad as she thought she would be. The people around her make it possible to go on.

"People are amazingly willing to listen," she says. "I haven't met anybody who didn't know what I was talking about."

Not all the first-years have had difficulty adjusting. Oliver, a graduate of the Dalton School in New York, came to Harvard with a built-in social network.

"Most of the people I know are East Coast private school," he says.

But it's been harder for him to move beyond his established set. Everyone has been very friendly, he says, but there's something missing.

"I don't like walking around meeting random people because it's superficial," he says.

And Ashwin says he isn't homesick at all--even though he calls his parents once or twice a day.

The Daily Grind

Leila Chirayath '04 comes home one Sunday afternoon clutching The New York Times.

"I've decided I need to read this three times a week," she announces.

Establishing routines, even little ones like subscribing to a daily paper, are important for finding your footing, the students say.

Or joining a club. The first-years are beginning to discover how much of life at Harvard is organized around extracurricular activities.

Most of them already had an idea what they wanted to do with their time.

Leila says having to choose just a couple of activities to pursue has made her feel unproductive. She has one activity for sure: she recently landed a slot as an assistant director for a Harvard Model United Nations committee on the UN Development Program, which she hopes to work for in real life. It has helped her to feel more grounded.

Other residents of 32 and 42 find routine--and friends--through sports.

Brendan M. McCafferty '04 describes himself as a "quiet kid." He plays football, which means he was in Cambridge a month before most other first-years for pre-season practices.

He spends most of his time with other athletes. Being shy is not a problem for him because he is getting to know his teammates so well.

"I don't think it's harder for me to meet people or enjoy myself," he says. "By the time classes started I knew 110 guys."

For Ellie, 20 hours of swimming a week provide a similar feeling of structure.

"Swimming is such a part of my life," she says. "If I wasn't doing it, I'd feel lost."

Kip, the British Columbian, specifically chose Harvard for its strong rowing program.

"I probably would have stayed in Canada had it not been for the rowing down here," he says.

But while some of the students, like Leila, have plunged into activities, others have decided to take it easy at first.

Ashwin, on the hard-working end of the group, has taken one approach. He says he was cautious in his first months not to take on too many groups.

"I wanted to focus on classes more than other things," he says.

He sings with Collegium Musicum, an a cappella and concert choir. Last weekend, he and the other singers rehearsed for 10 hours for their concert next Saturday night.

Now that classes have started and he has experienced a few weeks of homework, Ashwin says he is ready to try more activities--like rock climbing.

"I'm finding myself with free time," he says. He's eager to fill it with new commitments.

For other students, taking on major extracurricular positions has been easier to do in the early weeks when classes have not gotten underway yet.

Sarah, for instance, signed on as a producer for the first-year musical.

"I'm glad I decided to do this without thinking about the long run, because if I had I might have been scared off," she says.

Lee hasn't committed to activities beyond rowing. He says he might want to comp the Lampoon or work on a public service project, but for the moment he is watching his friends for guidance.

"When you get a sense of what everybody else is doing, you get a sense of what might be interesting," he says.

That approach has already yielded results for Sarah and Kip. She joined a prison tutoring program because her leader on the Freshman Urban Program this fall is in charge of it. And Kip joined when he heard about it from Sarah.

Good Advice?

The extracurriculars have been easy, they say. It's academics that have proven the greatest challenge. The 12 first-years haven't figured out yet how to balance the two.

"My whole life I've been told academics are most important," Anne says. "It will be interesting to see how that works out."

So far, they say they are generally satisfied with the courses they picked. But as 10 of the 12 residents of the two rooms sit around in the girls' common room, they start griping about how academics are advertised at the College.

"I felt like I was flying blind," says Ayirini M. "Rini" Fonseca-Sabune '04. "Nobody told me what I should be looking for."

She says--and her roommates agree--that the flood of material that arrived over the summer didn't help them sort out their options.

"They sent so much crap in the mail," she says. "They're heavy on reading material, not talking to you."

That can sometimes be an advantage. Brendan chose three large courses specifically so he wouldn't have to talk.

Extracurriculars, by contrast, were easier to choose because they held introductory meetings and did one-on-one communication, says William B. Lea '04.

"They were upfront," he says. "They told you what it was about."

The most basic details were sometimes the most startling. Susan says she had filled out her shopping list only to realize later that brackets in Courses of Instruction meant the classes weren't offered.

They say they use and trust their proctor but most often turn to students in the upper grades for advice. Some rely on siblings, others on leaders from the outdoor or urban programs, others on team captains.

"I've sort of formed my upperclassman network," Sarah says.

There's always the Unofficial Guide, she says, but "sometimes you want to talk to a person."

'There's a Huge Sense of Randomness'

Leila returns to Weld 42 after a Sunday afternoon of shopping. As her roommates look on, she shows off the tall black boots she bought and the decorative aluminum plates she got for her room.

"Everybody knows I'm quasi-sophisticated," she jokes as she tries on the earrings she bought during her shopping trip.

It's an established fact that Leila dresses much more stylishly than her roommates. For her birthday last week, her roommates and the boys from 32 bought her sweat pants and socks as a joke.

"They think I need to tone down the fancy clothes," she says.

She's the most confident of the group, perhaps because she's seen something of the world. Leila graduated from high school a semester early and worked the second half of her senior year in a school for the blind in Ghana.

Hung on the wall in her room is a zebra-pattern death mask that she brought back with her from the country. For her birthday, Lee gave her a harvest mask from Ghana.

"I'd venture to say this was made in the same village," she says.

Leila marvels at having met students at Harvard who can relate to her experiences.

"The fact that I've met people who've heard of or have relatives in that village is beyond comprehension," she says.

But it's disorienting to be back in the United States, at a huge university like Harvard. Everything is so different from Ghana and from life in high school.

"It's hard to know where other people stand," she says. "I feel very not confident.

"There's a huge sense of randomness. I have to get with the program."