Reinventing Ourselves

One brisk morning several weeks ago, I trekked up Garden Street to the Registrar’s Office in order to glimpse the recent past through my House file.

For those of you who don’t know, your House file is a treasure trove of information. It reads like a good biography—with the added benefit that it is entirely about you. The file contains such juicy documents as: your application to Harvard, complete with the markings from the admissions officer who read it; your roommate request form, including an administrator’s short synopsis of your personality and your first-year proctor’s evaluation of you at the end of your freshman year. (Yes, Tom, I saw the crack you made about my doomed singing aspirations).

Besides being a resource for those of you who are currently compiling applications, and a chance to see what your sophomore adviser really thinks of you, the House file gives you a snapshot of how you appeared to Harvard upon enrolling as a first-year-a “before” picture, if you will.

But what shocked me about reading my application to Harvard was how astonishingly little I’ve changed. The young, “gentle” budding-neurobiologist with interests in newspaper writing and music who walked into Matthews Hall three years ago looks pretty similar today, except the gentle part, which Harvard has slowly molded into skepticism and acid wit.

Freshman year, Harvard appeared as a promised land, where one would enter and be forever changed by the endless array of activities and opportunities. Like most first-years, I signed up for every student activity at the fair, and I went religiously to every forum given at the IOP. But sometime around the middle of sophomore year, as I finally unsubscribed from the Shokotan Karate e-mail list, I lost my Harvard naivete and suddenly found that despite my best efforts, I had wound up exactly where I started. I seem to have joined the plodding majority of undergraduates who, despite their best intentions, find ourselves unable to escape the self with which we began college.

What happened to the idea that college is a time for experimentation? Have I, like many of my peers, missed the rebellion train?

This weekend as scores of goblins, ghouls, Russian prostitutes and other creatures of the night spilled out onto the streets of Harvard Square to wreak havoc in celebration of Halloween, I was reminded of the need we have to reinvent ourselves. For one night, we donned masks, capes and make-up to forget ourselves momentarily, indulging the secret passions of our collective, and often invisible, id.

But, by the time the sun rose one hour late on Sunday morning, everything was back to normal in dreary, static Harvard. The costumes came off, the football players returned to practice across the river, the musicians retreated to rehearsal and I strolled back to The Crimson. We all seem to return to the comfortable.

Yet, there is more to the story than a simple lack of adventurousness on the part of undergraduates. Too often, Harvard is about reinforcing our strengths, instead of prompting us to reinvent, to take risks and to change. Last semester, on the spur of the moment, I switched my concentration from biology to philosophy. I thought that I had found my true passion, and I tried to reinvent myself. But, starting anew becomes practically impossible here, as early as second semester of sophomore year. With first semester sophomore tutorials and concentration requirements ranging from 13-16 courses, undergraduates need to come to Harvard with a good sense of what they want to study, especially if they are to declare their concentration by the end of their first year.

For the most part, many of us exhibit the same stagnancy in our extra-curricular activities, although we often share more in the blame. It is true that many of us refrain from experimenting because we feel intimidated by the achievements of our peers in areas that are new for us. And I have no doubt that the competition here does in fact prevent us from fully experimenting with new activities, as my short-lived a cappella career can attest.

But there are a few of us who do manage to remain free spirits despite the invisibly restrictive muck with which Harvard surrounds us. These are the people who sample five concentrations before settling down, those who nibble from the Harvard extra-curricular smorgasbord before taking a large helping from the exotic table—those who make Halloween last four exciting years. And these are the people whom I most envy.

Robert J. Fenster ’03 is a biology concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.