The Silver Lining

It was almost too predictable to be taken seriously. “No work during the holidays!” cried the Harvard students upon discovery that the administration had abandoned planned courses for the new January break. “But whatever shall we do?”

An evaluation of the typical Ivy League personality reveals this anxiety to be understandable. There are various routes into Harvard—trillions of dollars in family money, the skills of an unsurpassed prodigy, or a willingness to expose oneself the harshest of nature’s elements, peeling the skin off of one’s own palms and repeatedly pushing a plank through water (otherwise known as crew). Most of us, however, choose to work very, very hard. While generally regarded as a positive characteristic, this drive to work also makes us susceptible to tendencies of excess. As a necessary counter to the detrimental effects of an obsessive work ethic, we should welcome the enforced break of an unstructured J-term.

In many cases, work fanaticism is either an avoidance or cultivation of inadequacies in other, less structured, domains. Although students’ original dedication to work was likely based on an innate love of algebra, it is possible that this interest was also motivated by a somewhat diminished temptation for the frolics of youth. A highly scientific straw poll of the first 20 people I recognized in Quincy revealed that only four felt they were popular at the age of 12 to 14; past social reclusion is not a universalistic trend, but it does seem to be prevalent.

As awkward 12-year-olds with thick glasses and asthma, perhaps many of us came to the decision that, if our judgmental tweenage peers wouldn’t accept us, we would find entertainment elsewhere. Distancing ourselves from sleepovers, playground antics, and inconsistent cliques, we turned to books, perhaps even requesting extra work from teachers to fill the empty void of lunch break.

Reward arrived with our Harvard acceptance letters, and salvation was granted in the opportunity to join a campus of fellow one-time social outcasts. But, if the palpability of students’ social abilities is less obvious, the unrelenting drive to work persists and automatically demands limited social interactions.

The problem? Well, for one thing, Harvard students are unhappy. Student satisfaction ranks near the bottom of a group of elite colleges, and a lack of social life is identified as one of the major problems. A close friend—atypical at Harvard in that she has always been popular and is thus possibly more affected by the lack of social interactions—recently told me that she viewed her university experience as a reason to “be strong and just get through time.”

Indeed, in many cases, the desperate effort to add on more courses and yet more extracurricular activities does seem like a frantic attempt to fill time. Students cram the day with meetings and work so that there is not the slightest opportunity for conversation. Summer vacation? Internship. Winter vacation? Fall back on the middle-school tactic and ask for extra work, formally known as the J-term.

Our excessive dependence on work is revealed by the worried speculation over how to fill time now that J-term courses are cancelled. Relying on university administration to provide fulfilling experiences suggests a feeble lack of self-sufficiency. Similarly, demands for holiday courses, even if optional and not for credit, hints at an aversion to independent thought. Even if one specifically selects a topic of personal interest, J-term courses would still feed students potential topics to consider and contentions to analyse. Why can’t students use holiday relaxation to come up with their own questions?

Collectively, Harvard students are extremely successful in a work environment but have a dire need to develop the other aspects of a well-rounded life. Personally motivated pursuits—long conversations with friends, reading for pleasure, thought driven by curiosity and not course demands—are crucial aspects of life notably underemphasized on the Harvard campus. Given students’ unhappiness with their highly work-oriented lives, it seems obvious that much can be gained from the imposed abandonment of work for five weeks next January. Hopefully, this will give students the space to reconsider their middle-school habits and dabble in the other forums of life.


Olivia M. Goldhill ’11, a Crimson editorial writer, is a government concentrator in Pforzheimer House.