A Message for Visitas-ing Students

Harvard students are rarely asked why they chose Harvard. For many people, it’s circular. They went to Harvard because it’s Harvard. Ours is a school so often synonymous with success and academic excellence that its name is used as shorthand. Social media is flooded with clickbait videos and articles with titles like “Tricky riddle that ’97 per cent of Harvard grads cannot solve’ leaves people baffled – so can YOU figure out the answer?” Getting into Harvard, for many students, makes the choice pretty easy.

I think a lot about why I’m here. Like many current undergraduates, I never imagined myself at Harvard. I remember walking around the campus in October 2021 in utter amazement of the historic, beautiful brick buildings lining the Yard, especially the majesty of Widener Library. My mom, nervous that I would get my hopes up, tried tempering me as much as she could. I could feel the anxiety radiating from her, worried that I would get my heart broken by a rejection letter. My grandparents, too, would send me article after article deriding the prestigious and uninviting culture of Ivy League schools.

At the time, I didn’t take their concerns personally. Visiting Harvard felt like visiting the U.S. Congress or walking down the Freedom Trail. Sure, it was beautiful, but it wasn’t mine. It was a part of history, of American culture, of which I was merely getting a survey.

That’s perhaps what made Visitas so jarring — that I was visiting a place again, only months later, in a different context. Whereas I was an observer before, this time I was a participant.

Most of my now-friends talk about their Visitas experience as joyous. They recount with small smiles their stories of meeting people they immediately became friends with. They talk about staying up with their hosts, learning about Harvard and what it was like to be a student.

For me, Visitas was distinctly less positive. I remember how engaged I felt listening to the handful of lectures I attended and again being in awe of the beautiful buildings, this time seeing the inside of Memorial Hall and Sanders Theatre. But I also felt distinctly alone. I made no instant connections with anybody. Conversations I had were shallow and fleeting, and I honestly couldn’t tell you the name of anybody I met during that weekend. It seemed as though everyone already had their cliques.

I was so completely lost. I was surrounded by people sure of their futures. They had already committed to coming here, and they knew exactly what they were going to study. They seemed comfortable. I didn’t know what I was doing or what I was supposed to be doing.

I walked away from Visitas confused. I left with more questions than answers, and no closer to knowing where I should go. In fact, after Visitas I felt even more divided between my final two choices, Harvard and Columbia University (a school I had dreamed of going to for the prior six years).

But I chose Harvard.

I still don’t know why exactly. I can give you the answers I used to justify it to myself at the time: the job security that comes along with a Harvard degree, the fact that Cambridge would have been an easier transition from rural Colorado compared to Manhattan, the realization that I liked the campus more. But really, it came down to a gut feeling I had. A sense that choosing Harvard was the right decision.

I try not to look back at that decision much, because it’s a decision that I can’t unmake. But everytime I call my mom, she asks me the same question.

“Do you regret choosing Harvard?”

And every time I answer the same way.

“No.”

There are a lot of reasons I shouldn’t belong at Harvard. I’m not wealthy. Neither of my parents went to Ivy League schools (although they both are incredibly smart). I didn’t spend my high school years obsessing over my grades. I come from a rural, isolated part of the American West. I think a lot of those things are what made Visitas feel the way it did for me — why I felt isolated and lonely.

These days, as a full-fledged Harvard student, I only sometimes feel that way. But for every night I’ve been overwhelmed by schoolwork, or felt deeply lonely, I’ve spent an equal amount of time laughing and talking for hours with friends, or genuinely enjoying a lecture, or feeling engaged in a discussion section. I’ve spent hours in rehearsal for some new play or musical, at home with people who feel like my people.

At Harvard, I’ve found my place. I’ve found people that I love, and people who appreciate me. I’ve found work, both inside and outside of class, that I find immensely fulfilling. I’ve found a home for myself at Harvard.

I know there are prospective Harvard students who will feel the same way I did during Visitas: who will feel alone and scared, who will feel that they do not belong. I urge you, if you are feeling that way, to not let it linger. You are sure to go through periods of feeling blue while you are at Harvard. But as you spend more time here, and you find the niches in which you belong, you will find a home. You will find people who respect and appreciate and love you. If you put in the work, you can find a place here in Cambridge — where you belong.

Vander O. B. Ritchie ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Matthews Hall.