Too Many Possibilities, Too Little Time

I think I have discovered why Harvard is so stressful. Maybe. Regardless of college itself, the whole "moving away from home/doing own laundry/paying own phone bill/in charge of own life" situation presents its own stress, but Harvard seems to be more of a pressure cooker than most other schools. Why?

Last month I was sitting in a language class, thinking about how the class really was just like a high school language class, particularly for the many college preparatory school alums of the Andover/Exeter variety that Harvard likes to recruit. A class is a class is a class, right? At Harvard there may be much more work, but also much more time to do the work. So why all the stress?

As I was sitting in this language class, ignoring the professor while thinking in English, I was stressing out about how much stuff I needed to be doing at that moment, contemplating whether I should've bothered waking up for class, if I was ever planning on finishing my Crimson comp, whether I should've skipped the class for sleep or work, what my Saturday night plans were, weighing sleep vs. work vs. extracurriculars vs. class, thinking about the application deadlines I was about to miss, what courses I should take next semester, the surprise birthday party I needed to plan for my roommate, how I was ever going to fit my job into my life, remembering to bring my sweats to my swim meet, reminding myself of the few professor meetings it would be good to set up.

This line of thought, right here, is why Harvard is stressful. I was sitting in class thinking of all the equally or more productive places I could've been at that moment. At Harvard, you're always somehow missing an opportunity, even if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, i.e. going to class. For the driven types that Harvard tends to attract, this realization is stressful.

This landmine of opportunity/major cause of stress also happens to be the reason I came to Harvard (I didn't identify the stress part at the time). I was attracted to the flexibility and myriad opportunities a large, stellar school like Harvard has to offer. There are open doors swinging in every direction, all of which any student can walk through with a bit of application. Yes, there will be competition, but there's also a big wide doorway just waiting for you. But sometimes there are too many doors.

Don't get me wrong, doors are a good thing. Too many doors will always be far superior to not enough doors. But doors are also highly stressful because you're forced to make choices. "Yes, I would love to be in this club or act in that performance or write for that publication, but I just can't." At Harvard you can do anything, but not everything. This is unfortunate for the many extremely multi-talented students in Cambridge who really are proficient at everything.

A choice is always better than no choice, so clearly, Harvard is a good place to be, where doorways sing every which way; now that the main source of stress has been identified, we only have to talk ourselves out of it.

--Arianne R. Cohen