The Eleventh Habit of Highly Successful Harvard Students
I live in a double in the Inn on Mass Ave. My name is Patrick Boylston. I’m 19 years old. I believe in taking care of myself, in an imbalanced course schedule, and a rigorous coffee chat routine.
From the moment I wake up, I follow my carefully color-coded Google Calendar. Of course, due to my many commitments, I can’t help that the only times I have to finish my problem sets are during lectures, or that I only call my parents while I’m brushing my teeth at night.
As my commitments necessarily ramp up, it requires more fitness to balance everything. The trek to Northwest for my math class (14 minutes and 20 seconds) feels like a massive waste of time. Not to mention, the professor is teaching content that won’t be on next week’s midterm, so attending this lecture would do little good.
Although missing class has become a standard part of my routine, I wouldn’t call myself “behind.” My strategic avoidance is merely a tool for maximizing efficiency. Now I am become Optimization, the epitome of productivity, thanks only to my emotionally intimate relationship with a state-of-the-art “Samantha”:
The Panopto 2x speed function.
Why would I ever spend an hour and fifteen minutes sitting in a room in Northwest, when I could digest the same content in 37.5 minutes from the comfort of my own dorm? Plus, I can bypass a dreadful 45 seconds of small talk with my classmates if I don’t go to the lecture hall. And whenever some silly attendee raises their hand — no doubt to ask a question that won’t appear on the exam — I can avoid the whole business by just hitting the right arrow once, twice, fifteen times.
As a matter of fact, I’ve become an expert at using the skip forward feature. No longer do I have to bear the weight of my own thoughts as I wait for a lecturer to organize their notes. And I don’t mind missing out on the comedic timing of my professor’s jokes. I haven’t scheduled any time for laughing. Humor is unproductive and should be abolished. Why would a professor waste my time being entertaining or engaging to listen to? At Harvard of all places!
With Panopto, I can filter out everything but the pure, sweet song of rapid mathematics spewing through space and time. I will never again need to interact with other humans at a biologically-limited pace.
Whenever I spot the backs of my classmates’ heads on my screen, I feel a justified surge of self-righteousness. How silly they are, how unoptimized, taking their tidy iPad notes and solving equations along with the professor. They don’t know Panopto the way I do — with her as my guide, I can merely scroll forward to see the solution and skip the pointless business of calculating!
Plus, unlike the archaic hominids I have for classmates, I’m not confined to learning from 9:00 to 10:15 am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Panopto is there whenever and wherever I need her. This is where my effectiveness really takes off. I can play two lectures at once. I can consume educational fodder while ingesting my typical 100 grams of raw protein powder or while completing my daily thousand stomach crunches. I can use split screen to learn linear algebra while working on articles for The Crimson — with no harm to writing quality whatsoever. Hell, Panopto can teach me matrix multiplication while I sleep.
My friends (the other students posting on Ed instead of going to office hours) are constantly asking me how I became the textbook definition of an academic weapon. I can only shrug. It’s an investment, measured in thousands of dining hall to-go boxes, hundreds of dollars spent on electric scooters, and years of experience consuming high-speed video content. I’ve got the intellectual reflexes of a high-performance athlete. This is necessary to my four-year plan, which is delineated in a minute-by-minute spreadsheet.
To become the ultimate Panopto lover, I must maximize stimulant intake. It takes twice as much coffee to watch a lecture twice as fast. If I drink five cups with my breakfast, time becomes a dimension I can manipulate at will to keep up with a sixth class and five additional extracurriculars. Swallow an entire bottle of caffeine pills from CVS, and the only time I’ll need to dedicate to academics is a half hour before each exam to speed-read Panopto’s audio transcripts. The world falls away, and it’s just me and Panopto, reaching full human potential as one.
With my physical performance enhanced, Panopto gives me towering abilities. She empowers me to perfectly control and divide my attention among unlimited responsibilities. Courses, extracurriculars, personal hygiene… Nothing is neglected when it operates under Panopt(icon)’s loving observation.
What’s that? Ten percent of my math grade will be based on participation? Not to worry. I’ll just have to redesign my calendar to include reloading Poll Everywhere each morning. Perhaps I can slot it in at the same time I’m in Elon Musk’s X comments, begging him to acquire Panopto for Neuralink integration.
Once Panopto can transcend my cold gaze and project straight to my brain, you will shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, but I simply won’t be there. I’ll be watching lectures.
— Magazine writer Kate J. Kaufman can be reached at kate.kaufman@thecrimson.com.