Out With the Checklist

Though Europeans mock Americans for having no real culture of their own, there are certain values one never questions in this country. We treasure convenience, as symbolized by drive-through fast food, self-understanding, manifest by easy access to astrology charts at the check-out stand, and—most importantly—the importance of setting goals for the future, embodied in the American dream itself.

In an article in the Boston Globe published last month, Drake Bennett calls this last tenet into question. Bennett offers up examples of companies whose goal-driven business models led them to fail, from GM’s ill-fated drive to capture 29 percent of the automobile market to Ford’s disregard for warnings about the combustibility-prone Pinto in its disastrous determination to win back market share. What goes for business goes for life—Bennett quotes Adam Galinsky, a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, who warns that goal-setting in general “can focus attention too much, or on the wrong things; it can lead to crazy behaviors to get people to achieve them.”

This certainly resonates at Harvard, where student ambitions drive them to absurd, unhealthful behavior as a matter of course. One student I know put himself through the gauntlet of a 14-hour-per-day summer lab job pipetting in the hopes of snagging a future Harvard Medical School admissions letter; another suffered an existential crisis because he felt that none of his extracurriculars were sufficiently frivolous enough to show employers he could have fun. The anxiety runs deep—next Wednesday, the Office of Career Services will attempt to soothe those whose goals have been dashed with a panel entitled “Reflections on Rejections,” in which a “booklet of actual rejection letters received by your deans” will be distributed. It’s hard to imagine precisely the consolatory value in flipping through the crushed dreams of one’s superiors, but this schadenfreude throws light on the meaninglessness of elevating goal-setting to such a sacred position in the first place.

There’s no reason to impose such strict career objectives upon oneself. Indeed, our particular educational system is a blessing in that it encourages exploration and creative thinking, a boon that hasn’t gone unnoticed by other countries. Over spring break, through the Harvard College in Asia Program, I had the opportunity to stay at Hong Kong University with a group of fellow undergraduates. The dean of education there informed us that the college is planning to reform its curriculum—a relic of British colonial rule—to bring it more in line with the American system. Rather than starting off their university years with a set major and pre-professional plans, students will now be able to dabble in the glorious uncertainty of a liberal arts education.

Granted, we ought not to throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater; nobody’s suggesting that we should lack initiative. It makes sense for those who desire to be doctors to take organic chemistry or engage in lab work now, just as it makes sense for would-be writers to read novels and write for publications. Not setting strict goals, however, is much different from not working hard. Being 30-something and still living in your parents’ basement off vague dreams is not the successful result of a broad education. But to retain forever the mindset of being “pre-” something—pre-med, pre-law, pre-finance—has the potential to cut down on spontaneity, to close off options before they’re even considered. Those who define themselves as future members of a profession will find it difficult to ever truly inhabit the mindset of those outside their discipline.

And, surely, with the current financial crisis, this is just the right time to keep one’s mind open to unconsidered academic and job possibilities. While not having one’s life plotted out can be terrifying, given economic conditions—663,000 more jobs were cut last month, bringing the jobless rate to a record 8.5 percent—the danger may lie not in planning too little, but too much. According to U.S. Department of Labor estimates, the average American changes careers three to five times in his lifetime, making flexibility imperative. Perhaps it’s time for Harvard students to embrace the terror of unknowing and to check their aspirations—it may be the case that the road to hell is paved not with good intentions, but with overly focused ones.


Jessica A. Sequeira ’11, a Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House.