Grow Up

“I’m so old!” goes the familiar whine of Harvard seniors when talking to underclassmen. This comment strikes me as bizarre because most of the time the age gap between the senior and underclassman is less than three years. There are only two places such an age gap is significant: college and a nursing home. Before and after our Harvard careers we have and will probably associate with people from ages seven to seventy who are at very different stages of life from us. Therefore, the lack of such age diversity at college is not just bizarre, but also potentially dangerous. It causes us to lose perspective on superficial issues—no, you can’t have pizza for three meals a day after you graduate—and more serious ones—we are all going to age someday. Therefore, college students should work to counter campus age homogeneity by actively seeking friends and acquaintances of different ages.

It makes sense that we associate largely with people of the same age. This phenomenon is common across age groups; a study by University of Berkeley sociologist Claude Fischer found that 72 percent of the close friends of Detroit men were within eight years of their age. However, the possibility of a non-age diverse friend circle is magnified at colleges because in most campus situations everyone living close to you is your age. “Residential proximity, age homogeneity, similarity and complementarity,” are the descriptors of adult friendships according to the “Encyclopedia of Adult Development,” and in a college situation the first two often coincide.

For many people, this is, in fact, a great advantage of college. In our garden of youth, it is socially acceptable to drink on Mondays, wake up at noon, and wear sweatpants all the time. The dating options are plentiful, and unsightly wrinkles and receding hairlines are largely out of sight.

However, just like living in any other demographic bubble, age homogeneity can cause us to lose perspective. After hearing me fret over a course grade one of my academic advisors, reminded me “The skills that make you academically successful are different from the skills that are valuable in the workplace.” When you get wrapped up in the measures of and goals of college life, it’s useful to be reminded that Harvard is a four-year world whose influence will eventually yield to that of some employer or spouse you haven’t even met yet—so we should prepare ourselves accordingly.

And it is not as difficult as it may seem to do this. There are ways to break out the age homogeneity of our circles, and we should make use of them. Tutors, House Masters, teaching fellows, professors, HUDS staff, the little kids running around the dining halls there are many people within our community at stages of life very different from undergraduates. Conversations with them can be seen as necessary checks on the tendency to conceive student life as the only type of life.

It’s ironic that age segregation at college goes largely unquestioned, given that this reality in other parts of society is so contentious. Age segregation among the elderly is a source of serious debate; the question of whether retirement communities prevent social integration is a contentious one. Although the concerns may be slightly different in the case of college students, the problem is the same. Living with hundreds of people your age just isn’t normal, so let’s try not to get used to it.

Anita J Joseph ’12, a Crimson associate editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House.