Café Algiers and Computer Sci

Few would deny that Harvard is a pretty darn cerebral place. As we’re so often reminded, it’s America’s oldest college, home to Nobel-prize winning faculty and students who are the country’s best and brightest. In thinking about my past four years here, then, it strikes me as a bit odd that they seem altogether less academic than my high school years. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve taken Ec10 and read Milton—but the lessons that I learned from Mankiw and Teskey are inextricably intertwined with more personal ones. My classmate Edward Robinson ’09 summarized my feelings exactly when he said to me yesterday: “I expected freshman year that Harvard would make me superhuman; instead, it's just humanized me.”

Quantitative Reasoning 38 (“Game Theory”)—and friendships—have taught me to play tit for tat, with forgiveness built in. I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to throw dishware unless someone else started it, and every now and then, to take out the trash even when it’s not my turn. I’ve learned that giving or getting flowers can start cycles of cooperation that benefit everybody.

Philip J. Fisher’s class on Aestheticism and Modernism—and reading period—have taught me the importance of a sense of playfulness. I’ve learned that there are two approaches to a T minus 24-hours sense of panic: partaking in a dining hall arms race (“Only two papers? Try three.”) and snapping at strangers, or slowing down, taking my computer to Café Algiers, and appreciating January’s new fallen snow.

QR20 (“Computers and Computing”)—and graduating—have taught me that happiness demands being bold enough to do things badly.

I’ve learned that no matter how crackpot or distant a goal may seem, taking the first step toward realizing it always feels right. At Harvard, I’ve often found that many things that may seem like poor choices or wastes of time on a résumé—leaving for a semester to study abroad, starting to play guitar, taking computer programming, not participating in e-recruiting—were unquestionably the right choices for me and have actually helped make me the person who I want to be. I came into Harvard not used to being bad at things, but I’ve realized that being a novice, or an absent-minded daydreamer, is the first step toward becoming an expert and realizing one’s potential.

In Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, the character Miranda’s exclamation, “O, wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That has such people in't!” is widely regarded as proof of her naiveté. I, however, today on Class Day, cannot help but echo her words. Here, the more that I’ve learned, and the more that I’ve lived, the more that I’m left in wonder at the interconnectedness of things, and the beauty around me.

While this lesson may not immediately help me to find gainful employment, it gives me an inner peace that I know I will carry with me from job to job, from city to city, and from decade to decade. Looking back at college, I could not have hoped for a better education, and I leave Harvard, above all else, with gratitude.


Justine R. Lescroart ’09, a crimson editorial writer is an english concentrator in Quincy House.