Get Out of Here

While Harvard undergrads are racing from class to extracurricular to evening section, trying to cram in a half-hour of treadmill time before hunkering down in Lamont for a late-night cram session, I’m lounging on Sydney’s glorious Bondi Beach. Over the last few months, the most multitasking I’ve done has been trying to apply sunscreen while thumbing through the pages of a coursepack saturated in ocean spray.

I’ve never been happier in my life, and yes, Harvard administration, I am being intellectually stimulated by the tremendous faculty at the University of New South Wales here in Sydney, Australia.

Considering the immense popularity of study-abroad currently, it may seem like clichéd overkill to devote more ink to its merits. Thousands of American students nationwide are already fleeing their home universities (generally, although not exclusively, during junior year) to study in exotic locales ranging from Bangalore to Beirut, from urban hubs to bucolic villages.

Yet strangely, this entire study-abroad phenomenon has left Harvard more or less unscathed. Specifically, only a hundred of Harvard’s roughly 6,000 undergraduates are escaping the ivory tower this semester, despite lucrative policies implemented by former President Summers intended to encourage international study. For example, Harvard students only have to pay the relatively small thousand-dollar student services fee to the Office of International Programs should they study abroad.

Even colleges with significantly more restrictive study-abroad policies manage to ship off far higher numbers of students. The University of Pennsylvania, for example, requires its study-abroad students to fork over to its institution’s coffers the difference in cash they would otherwise be saving by studying at international universities, which are usually cheaper. University of Pennsylvania study-abroad students consistently number over 600 a year.

Is this because Harvard students are having more fun than peers at rival institutions such as Duke, where nearly half of the undergraduate studies abroad? Perhaps we have a fun czar, but judging by the sallow, despondent looking Harvard students quaffing Starbucks by the gallon come midterm time, I think not.

Rather, it seems that a multitude of über-competitive students refrain from studying abroad because they fear either missing out on leadership in their extracurricular of choice, or having less time to bolster their GPA (study abroad grades all transfer credit as Pass/Fail at Harvard).

Looking back a few years from now, however, the extra tenth of a point you were unable to raise your GPA by will seem trivial compared to the opportunities opened by study-abroad. For instance, never again will I advocate U.S. foreign policy towards China to a skeptical bunch of Aussies one day, and bungee-jump over a crocodile-infested pond the next.

So just how will you benefit from your time abroad? Of utmost importance, you will be able to learn for the sake of learning, unbridled by the fear of failure grade-wise and unintimidated by Harvard’s cutthroat, oftentimes excessively driven student populace. You will also be able to immerse yourself in a foreign culture—sans familial or major work obligations—for longer than will ever be possible again. Finally, so far removed from the stresses and rigmarole of Harvard life, you will doubtless have time to pursue far-flung interests that you would never pursue otherwise—anything from cooking to kite-surfing.

So what if you are never president of the Harvard Investment Banking and Management Consulting Society?

Stephen C. Bartenstein ’08, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Lowell House.