A pang of dread shoots through my chest. No, it wasn’t supposed to be accepted. It was just one of those foolish aspirations you have, like, say, running a marathon or doing your readings in one sitting. But there it was at the top of my inbox: My pitch had been accepted.

For the rest of the week I had committed to never saying “no.”

Every pub email, every flyer, every overheard conversation in the dining hall — if the event fit in my schedule, I would attend it. My only consolation: Harvard Outing Club had sent out their emails a few hours earlier, saving me from the horrifying prospect of hiking a majestic mountain in rural New England. I didn’t have time for such shenanigans! I had clubs to comp, ices to break, boots to lick.

Thus began my week of journalistic masochism.

Day 1.

Professor Jill Lepore almost made me late to my first event of the week. Who schedules a class from 6 to 8 p.m. at the law school? Molluscan dreams flashed before my eyes as I sprinted back across Harvard’s bloated campus: There were oysters at the Leverett House social.

My excitement had less to do with actually swallowing the boogers of the sea, and more with getting to brag that I had gotten them for free. But lo, when I arrived, all that remained were empty iridescent shells — my oyster dreams shucked away.

I squashed my disappointment with a tower of shrimp coated with enough cocktail sauce to drown my sorrows.

It was lucky, then, that the next event in my inbox was free peer counseling for eating concerns. Ah, this was the point of my challenge! Would I have otherwise schlepped to Matthews basement for therapy without the spur of arbitrary external motivation? Poppycock! Although, to be honest, maybe my shrimp guzzling was cause for concern…

I sat between two peer counselors asking alternating questions like good cop, bad cop, except both were non-judgmental-and-open-to-hearing-my-concerns cops. By the end, I felt surprisingly calm and reinvigorated.

I had thought this challenge would burden me with the weight of endless choice, but in just the first day, my mental health was already on the up. Maybe this would be good for me…

Day 2.

My initial optimism was quickly tested as I stood outside 8 Eliot Street, the advertised location of a Rabbinic advice session and study group offered by MEOR — the neglected younger child of Jewish organizations on campus. Eventually, the doors of the Salient’s headquarters swung open, and before I could process anything, I was pulled towards the bastion of conservative Truth. Why the meeting was being held here (besides the need to put the Judeo in the Salient’s Judeo-Christian values) was beyond me.

But my many questions had to wait. The free Korean short ribs and panoply of sushi demanded my attention, as did the shockingly nice decor (thanks, Peter Thiel! … allegedly). Scarlet upholstered chairs and bookshelves stocked with tomes of Christian thought populated the space.

An edition of The European Conservative magazine sat on a stool to my right. The cover depicted an overweight blue-haired liberal and a turbaned brown man banging on the windows of an Aryan family’s home… subtle.

Meanwhile, the MEOR rabbi told us we should prioritize self-growth above career growth. Our tombstones, he said, would be engraved with the values we embodied, not the clubs we joined.

I was almost getting the message when my G-cal notified me it was time for my next comp meeting: time to fill my epitaph at the IOP!

At the interest meeting for the Program for Environmental Politics, I attempted to disguise my ambivalence towards both the IOP and environmental politics. This was especially challenging as I was among the only ones there failing to concentrate in ESE, ESPP, or any other environmentally-conscious acronym.

The meeting featured the very nice head of the program, two senior IOP members, and a dozen especially tiny freshmen. It was a rare glimpse at these freshmen in their Garden of Eden, before they inevitably heeded the serpent of finance clubs’ whispers, bit into the forbidden fruit of knowledge, and realized that saving the world is a lot harder (and less prestigious) than consulting for Palantir.

Luckily, the only fruit I was biting into was a handful of fresh blackberries and grapes, nestled among a smörgåsbord of Tatte pastries.

With the existential angst of climate change in my heart and half a tahini brownie in my stomach, it was time to become an Advocate.

The Harvard Advocate’s intro to comp event was a lesson to all clubs on how to use the precious sixty minutes of their introductory meetings. For the sake of any club leaders reading this, I compiled the experiential learning I received into four handy tips:

Four Tips for Comp Meeting Success:

1. Long lines

Everything worth having is worth waiting for. Ergo, a long line is synonymous with, nay compulsory for, a club of such prestige as the Advocate, whose alumni — per their very humble comp fliers — have won 1 Presidential nomination, 4 National Book Awards, and 13 Pulitzer Prizes (not quite a third of The Crimson’s, but who’s counting?)

Making compers wait outside for forty minutes means the next twenty will be all the more meaningful!

2. Intrigue

Pick a fun theme, something with dark academia connotations and just enough plot to keep your guests confused. A 19th century murder mystery, perhaps? You won’t even need to get into costume — everyone’s already smoking and wearing tweed.

3. Compliance with the Stop Campus Hazing Act

Make sure compers know they don’t have to drink that shot you just gave them… if they want to be losers.

4. Tradition

You may not be the nation’s oldest collegiate literary magazine (The Yale Literary Magazine has you beat), nor the nation’s oldest continuously published literary magazine (The Yale Review), but goshdarnit it if you aren’t the oldest continuously published collegiate literary magazine! And it’s your God-given right to spend the last (yet also first) twenty minutes of the meeting giving grandiose speeches packed with enough rhetoric to make Cicero sound like doggerel.

I hope these tips prove useful for your next comp meeting. Meanwhile, I need to get back to my dorm. It’s 9:30 pm. I have not started any homework.

Is it only day two?

Day 3.

My previous day’s adventures had spanned religion, environmental policy, and literature. But I had yet to attend the apex predator of Harvard’s extracurricular ecosystem: the finance and consulting clubs. Sure, I had learned that my clubs wouldn’t be engraved on my tomb, but how could I afford a nice marble gravestone without at least one pre-professional club under my belt?

In search of newfound fortune, I checked my invitation to the Harvard Financial Analysts Club’s quant comp kickoff (say that five times fast), only to see that — to my shock and horror — there was no location listed. I meticulously scoured their Instagram, but I had missed the chance to fill out the pre-pre-comp (or was it the pre-pre-pre-club?) info form.

I wended my way through the labyrinthine hallways of Boylston and Sever hoping to stumble into the gathering by chance, but Fate flung me into a Harvard Open Data Project meeting instead.

Everyone around me, I soon learned, had toiled through a months-long competitive process in order to be invited into this hallowed room. Yet I had just walked in. Had I discovered the secret to getting into any club on campus?

Yet, my imposter syndrome was growing by the minute. Worried I would be found out, I asked a mundane question to the first group of presenters, and escaped “to the bathroom,” never to return.

My failures did not end there. I headed from Sever to Weeks Bridge, hoping to catch the Harvard Political Review’s cocktail hour. I was already three Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Spiced Joe-Joe’s and a glass of Martinelli’s in when a friend politely informed me I was actually attending an Intercollegiate Model UN picnic that had started two hours ago and was now ending.

My dreams of finance and politics were dead. Only my beloved Leverett held consolation for me in the form of free boba tea at nine. Alas, I arrived right as the greedy horde sucked up the very last pearl.

I had failed to attend a single comp meeting and I had witnessed the extinction of the very last bubble tea before my eyes. I may have hit rock bottom, but at least the event had a few mochi left to cushion the fall.

Day 4.

But when I woke up the next day, I felt a pep in my step, less for the events I had to attend than for the prospect that I would be done with this exhausting challenge by the end of the day. Better still, I would get to start my afternoon with some delicious ice cream!

When I arrived at the Yard for my complimentary Cool Cow Creamery scoop, however, the truck was nowhere to be found. I guess the already controversy-laden Harvard Foundation feared being seen as promoting lactose-intolerance intolerance. Were my woes to continue?

Heading for the finish line of the challenge, I jogged over to the Mignone Center for Career Success’s Business and Consulting Fair at the Quad. Scared of being underdressed, I donned my Bar Mitzvah suit jacket (the arms have since been extended) over my t-shirt.

Undergraduates looking for jobs and internships swarmed about me. I was looking for something better: free food. I quickly scanned the room and made my way to a booth that was giving away cookies. After my dismal attempt at small talk with the recruiter ended in neither recruitment nor the offer of a sweet treat, I decided to take a lap.

In lieu of a cookie, I found the next closest thing to edible food: FDA-unvetted wellness supplements. I decided to boost my energy with a beet cube and my fitness with a creatine gummy. They were disgusting, but that made them even healthier!

If you wanted to make a positive impact on the world, this was not the place for you. But if you wanted to make money, damn, the possibilities were endless. One organization specialized in constructing private jet hangars for ultra-high-net-worth individuals. I had almost taken their internship offer when I remembered the IOP’s Environmental Policy session: Could I really betray those hope-filled freshmen by going into the private jet business?

As I left, I stole a cookie behind the recruiter’s back.

After a late class, it was time for my final event, not only of the day, but of the entire challenge: Shabbat 1000. The challah in front of me, which could not be eaten until after what felt like 23 speeches, taunted me. At last, when the sun finally set, I took a bite of my challah and I put away my technology to welcome in the Sabbath bride. With a piece of cold salmon and some roasted squash on my plate, my challenge had come to an end.

Day 5.

I had hoped that this pitch would give me the motivation to peek into the hidden world of Harvard’s 500+ student orgs. I walk away, however, a failure. I gained no new club memberships, internships, or even made it to half of my commitments. For no man, no matter how full his G-cal, can commit to more than a fraction of the universe of a university.

But, hey, it wasn’t all bad. I got real advice, went to programs I would have never considered trying otherwise, and discovered enough free food to avoid HUDS dinner for a whole week.

So next time you see a flier advertising a Divinity School psychedelic walking tour, or an email for a new squirrel fishing club, check it out. Maybe just don’t check it all out.

After all, there’s only so much room on your tombstone.

Final free food tally:

12 shrimp

2 mozzarella sticks

3 Korean short ribs

8 pieces of sushi

0.5 brownies

2 cranberry shortbread cookies

10 blackberries

22 grapes

1 mysterious cocktail

5 handfuls Trader Joe’s caramel cheddar popcorn

3 pumpkin spiced Joe-Joe’s

1 glass of Martinelli’s

3 mochi ice cream balls

3 suspicious supplements

1 Chip City cookie

1 mini loaf of challah

1 handful of green beans

3 dry Italian cookies

1 piece of cold salmon

1 cup of squash

—Magazine writer Henry G. Levenson can be reached at henry.levenson@thecrimson.com.