Do We Make Ourselves Miserable?

Before arriving on campus months ago, sitting around a campfire in Vermont a week before orientation, other people from an outdoor program designed to integrate freshmen into Harvard scared the hell out of me. They told me they love programs like these because they get to meet a bunch of people who don’t hate Harvard yet.

It’s not like I hadn’t heard about the complicated relationship undergraduates had with the College. This place has a reputation. I was warned by my former boss not to be changed by “those Harvard people.” Yet, nevertheless, in the first few days, Harvard life had already begun to affect me. Caffeine, little sleep, and forced handshakes leveraged by an incessant need for everyone to remake and “find” themselves in college make for an insufferable combination of fake niceties and anxiety.

I’m from Palo Alto, but I hadn’t ever heard of the Stanford Duck syndrome until my second day of orientation. The Stanford Duck syndrome is a model that portrays students at elite institutions as seemingly calm on the surface but incessantly paddling below the water. Since the second day of orientation, the Stanford Duck syndrome has become a touchpoint in conversation on sleep, social affiliation, and midterms ad absurdum.

Unfortunately, I’m not much of a duck. My tense, breathful paddling is clearly apparent. I’m two weeks late on a response paper, my midterm was moved up a week, and I don’t think I’m impressing my teaching fellows. Discovering assignments I had no idea existed is becoming a worryingly routine hobby. While this level of total ineptitude is unlikely being repeated on a massive scale, we freshmen all swim in the same waters.

Still, before these first few weeks, my characteristic old-manliness left me partial to that notion that “today’s” college students were winners or quitters. Real growth only comes through doses of suffering. Without pain, how can we be expected to change?

On a recent phone call, my dad echoed this notion. He said something to the effect of “lean into the miserableness.” Indeed, I am learning from the “miserableness.” But I still wonder though Harvard is a campus of students predisposed to the adage “no pain no gain,” do we need to accept that misery is of inherent value?

In my mind, accepting that conclusion results in a kind of life I have no interest in leading. Growth ought not to be tied up in a need for self-inflicted pain. That kind of association is kryptonite to the many a burned-out consultant or hedge fund manager. Misery is a means and never an end. Misery can help you change, but you change because you don’t want to be miserable anymore.

It seems to me that this campus valorizes the opposite. So many of us choose to go onto live lives that require perpetual sacrifice for a future that will never arrive. Sacrifice is not bad. One can sacrifice in the name of public service, making sure one’s children grow up in a household that can give them a good life, or for the freedom that money provides. The flawed thinking comes when one sacrifices for an outcome that never materializes. Happiness, positive change, or freedom are ends. Misery is but one of many means. Only ends have inherent value.

There are several things the College can do to realign academic priorities and promote growth without misery.

Freshmen often struggle unduly in the mixed class course even though they can grasp the concepts and do the work. The disconnect stems from an easily explained difference between how college and high school courses are taught. Predominantly freshmen courses often have optional introductory meetings for new students like “Surviving Gov 20.” Mixed class courses should do the same. A sophomore who had previously taken a given course could touch on what they wish they had known going into X, Y, or Z course in no more than an hour lecture and Q&A.

While I have had a very positive experience with my freshman adviser, I’ve not heard the same from many of my classmates. The role of the freshman adviser ought to be extended from an individual with whom a freshmen meets once a semester in order to receive an electronic signature, to one who actually advises. Only faculty who have time to meet with freshmen at least three times a semester should be freshman advisors. Students should be encouraged to send a list of classes they’re interested in ahead of a first meeting.

Still, I have lingering doubts. Perhaps, I’m just a complainer and a year from now today's pain will make tomorrow's familiarity with it a useful adjustment tool. The argument remains that some degree of perpetual dissatisfaction or pain leads to continual self-improvement. As we are, by nature, imperfect individuals, this seems desirable. Yet, on balance, it seems that life is far from lacking in the department of pain. It produces enough misery to promote self-improvement without the College adding on.

Max A. Dostart-Meers ’23, a Crimson Editorial comper, lives in Hurlbut Hall.