Nothing We Do Matters

If you look at the my.harvard.edu events calendar, which you’ve never looked at, you’ll find that there are about a thousand things going on at every hour. If you look at the new Undergraduate Council calendar app, which you’ve never looked at, you’ll find even more. And if you look at the Crimson opinion section, which you’ve never looked at happily, you’ll find one article every day telling you that you do too many of those things and that you should relax more.

A lot of people at this school think that students do too much. They think that students risk their mental health because they do so many things. They think that the Harvard community suffers because of this culture of doing a lot of things all the time.

But, to me, the discourse surrounding mental health on campus is too focused on quantity. Rather, it should be focused on quality.

Specifically, we need to realize that all the things we do here—from the academics to the extracurricular activities—don’t matter. Really. They don’t matter at all. The tests don’t matter. The internships don’t matter. The activities don’t matter. Nothing students do at this school matters.

Once we realize that, the pressure surrounding all the things we do on campus suddenly vanishes. All failures become inconsequential. And our mental health improves.

Of course I’m overstepping a bit. The things people do obviously matter to the people who do them, or else they wouldn’t be doing them. But if we ask whether the things people do really matter in a broader sense, the answer is often a resounding “no.”

Take our academics for example. We read. We write. We calculate. We experiment. And that’s all very useful for learning critical thinking skills that will help us pursue our goals and do all sorts of good things in the world later on. It matters in that sense.

But is anyone else going to be affected if you bomb a test? Will anyone care if you were able to derive an equation in physics that Newton derived a hundred years ago on a napkin for fun? Will anyone care what your ethnography of one charter school in Boston says about social inequality in the United States? The truth is that our educational triumphs and failures matter only to us and our educators. And that allows us to fail and learn in a constructed environment without any large consequences.

That seems obvious. But despite those widely accepted facts, some still place a lot of consequence and importance on their grades, as if their GPA will forever determine their lives. As a result, midterms and papers become gut-wrenching and stressful.

In reality, those feelings of importance, stress, and worry are completely artificial. Even if you do bomb your test, grade inflation elsewhere will more than make up for it. And for those students whose grades are really poor, you can take time off. People shift around their priorities and they improve. There are actually very few ways to wholly screw up. The system is constructed so that you can’t. That’s what makes it educational. And that’s a good thing. Those minor screw-ups along the way don’t really matter.

Outside of the academic realm, not much matters as well. Take internships: People place a lot of importance on applying to the best internships they can find as a way of packing their resume and refining their interests. But what if you don’t get your top choice for an internship? Or even your second choice? Or third? Or fourth? Or you don’t find any career-oriented jobs? Well, not much happens. You’d find a job scooping ice cream or you’d just chill at home. Then, you’d find another internship another summer or enter the workforce and work your way up through a job. You’ve got a Harvard degree. And that degree, combined with talent, means that you can do a lot of things, regardless of any missed internship opportunities.

The same goes for comping any prestigious organization with connections to a certain industry. In the long run, your degree and your talent will win out. For now, the missed “connections” and resume-padding don’t really matter.

The examples go on. Does it really matter, in the long run, how fast you can row a boat on a river somewhere? Does it really matter, in the long run, if you get a certain part in a play in the Loeb Ex (wherever or whatever that is)? Does it really matter, in the long run, whether your Crimson columns are good or complete crap?

At this point in our lives, we must recognize that we are still in a coddled, constructed environment. We are isolated from the world, and we have little impact on anything outside of these gates.

One day, what we do will matter. For now though, it doesn’t. And that’s a beautiful thing. Because stress is, largely, an artificial construction. The next test you bomb, the next internship you miss, and the next comp you fail: It doesn’t matter. And because of that, thankfully, you’ll know what to do when the stakes are higher.

Dashiell F. Young-Saver ’16, a Crimson editorial writer, is an English concentrator in Winthrop House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.