Lessons Syesha Taught Me

This is a time of endings. Tomorrow, cycle 10 of America’s Next Top Model will draw to a close, and Tyra Banks will bid us farewell till the fall. (Or, rather, till her talk show airs on Thursday afternoon.) Next week, our country will anoint its new beacon of hope—not in a presidential primary, but with the finale of American Idol season seven.

Oh, and in about three weeks I will graduate from Harvard.

Naturally, I’m reflecting. What meaning have I found? What friendships have I formed? What lessons have I learned? The first two are easy—the answer to both is David Archuleta. If you don’t know who he is, Archie (as insiders call him), is a current Idol finalist, an adorable seventeen-year-old phenom who, if there is any justice in the world, will soon be declared this season’s winner.

But what lessons have I learned from these last four years—sorry, I mean months—from the current seasons of Idol and Top Model?

The answer to that question comes from Syesha Mercado.

Syesha is another one of the three remaining American Idol contestants. What’s different about Syesha is that, unlike Archie, no one thought she’d still be in the competition at this point. In fact, it was a surprise when she made it to the top 12 over similarly belty and beautiful contestant Asia’h Epperson, whose name already sounds like a relic of a past age.

Syesha is a mystery. In seven out of the last nine weeks, she has been amongst the bottom three vote-receiving contestants, yet she continues to outlast seemingly stronger competitors. The past three weeks in a row she has been one of the bottom two vote-getters, suggesting she should be ousted the next week. And yet, every time, she survives.

Even Simon Cowell, judge and arbiter of all things Idol, declared recently that Syesha’s “got no chance. There’s a ceiling and she can never rise above that.” Where’s this ceiling to be found when Syesha’s in the top three while early favorites like Jason Castro, Brooke White, Carly Smithson, Kristy Lee Cook, and Michael Johns watch tonight’s performances from their living rooms?

The lesson Syesha’s taught me is easier to grasp after a little primer from Top Model. The current finalists—Anya, Fatima, and Whitney—do not include the best photographic model (Lauren, placed sixth), the charismatic fan favorite (Claire, placed eighth), or the girl who arguably looked most like a model in person (Katarzyna, placed fifth).

When Tyra judges the ladies standing before her, she is looking for great photos, confidence and charisma that will come across in CoverGirl commercials, and a model persona. The girls who are the strongest in one area inevitably seem to get kicked off before the finale if they are lacking in others. Lauren, for example, was dismissed after floundering in a commercial—a surprise exit that sent the most photogenic girl (and perhaps the only true potential editorial model) home.

What you need to win Top Model isn’t extreme talent in one area, but adequate strength in all dimensions. And that’s why the finales always come with some level of disappointment, since all the extraordinary girls seem to have already been sent home.

The same is true for American Idol, though each week it’s the American voters who decide the aspiring stars’ fates. You can be the most brilliant singer (like Carly Smithson, placed sixth), or the most endearing personality (like Brooke White, placed fifth), or the most authentic artist (like Jason Castro, placed fourth), but what Idol contestants need to get ahead is a combination of voice, likeability, and adaptability to the weekly themes.

Syesha has a good mix of all of these traits, and so she flourishes while her competitors flounder, undone by their inability to adapt themselves to the competition (Jason), to stay in strong voice (Brooke), or to get people to like them (Carly).

So what’s the point of all this rhapsodizing? Well, these last four months have a lot to say about these last four years. At Harvard, I’ve noticed that many of my peers have tried to be the best at something: the extracurricular leader, the 4.0-GPA academic, the A-list campus celebrity.

But a 4.0 doesn’t get you a job if you haven’t networked, and social charm won’t get you ahead if you have no organizational experience. This is the lesson we will learn the hard way once we’ve left Harvard to better serve our country and our kind: We shouldn’t be Brookes or Laurens; we should be Syeshas.

The good news is that, in spite of ourselves, most of us already are. We all know the musical prodigies with no social skills and the social butterflies with awful grades, but the large mass of us are pretty smart, pretty social, pretty adaptable, and pretty driven. And, as the Syeshas of the world, we’re bound to win. Or at least wind up in the finals.


Ryder B. Kessler ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Quincy House. His column appears regularly.