Doing School: An Experiment

This semester I’ve been conducting a social science research experiment. The subject is me. My professors would breathe a ground-sinking sigh at the size of the sample (n=1), the depth of my literature review (none), the possibilities for replication (ha), and, well, the fact that the researcher and the subject are the same person. Nevertheless, I've moved forward with a sense of all-importance.

The treatment was school. Not just school in the sense that we register for classes, show up to the sections that count for participation, b.s. our way through the sections that count for participation, and do only the readings that are relevant for the paper. Please raise your hand if this resonates with you. (If you are a math, science, or engineering concentrator, you can stop reading now.)

The treatment was school in the way the administration has increasingly hinted that we should be doing it: Keeping on top of the readings, writing papers beyond the standard of “Would-I-be-embarrassed-to-hand-this-in?” and attending the oh-so-neglected office hours. Maybe even go so far as to translate the occasional Latin and German in our very down-to-earth readings.

The message from the University lately, namely after the recent integrity crises, has been clear: Studying and learning in the classroom should come before anything, including extracurriculars. Those of you who are organizational leaders on campus may remember a post-Snowpocalypse email from Associate Dean David Friedrich: “Your help with…the expectation for your membership that they should be prioritizing academic commitments over extra-curricular activities will go a long way as we all work together following these unprecedented circumstances.” As a student in the social sciences, I cannot deny that I felt a pinch.

So this semester, I decided to shake up my priorities a bit. This new sense of initiative was facilitated by the fact that I had retired from almost all of my student activities. Like a decent social scientist (or a bad one that doesn’t know she’s bad), I started out with my primary hypothesis. What would be my reaction to this newfound way of doing school?

H-null: nah

H-1: yeah!

Before I reveal and discuss my results, I’ll discuss my orientation towards school during my freshman and sophomore years. My thought process was that the real learning happens outside the classroom. And I wasn’t exactly wrong. The Jenny that gave up close reading, office hours, and the occasional lecture to attend meetings and speaker events gained a ton of intangible insight and “marketable” skills not available in the classroom.

Needless to say, experiencing things like organizational friction, event planning crises, and engagement with the rules and people outside the Bubble have been especially valuable moments of learning. I was strongly convinced that I am at Harvard for the opportunities, and that those opportunities came more through extracurriculars than classes.

Treatment-me took some time to get used to the new lifestyle. My email inbox is populated by professors and teaching fellows rather than peers setting up student organization meetings. I make an effort to go to office hours and follow faculty to their event lectures. I open emails that I never would have touched before: Ones publicizing screenings of documentaries related to what I study in class. Most significantly, I buy books and actually read them.

I’m still not the best “student” I can be. I write as I sit here with stress burning my brain cells because I have a paper deadline looming too close and I am not prepared. But if you ask me whether I’ve found meaning in my in-classroom studies, I cannot deny that I have.

For the first time in many spring breaks, I found myself gushing details from the books I read for class to a reluctantly listening Mom, rather than organizing a post-break meeting at which to organize another meeting. I told her about the anthropological work that amplified the voices of single moms in the midst of a national debate on inequality dominated by upper-class senators and academics. I told her about a documentary that I randomly hit up because it was related to a class I’m taking. Have you ever thought critically about the fact that Chinese food is cheap everywhere and French food is expensive everywhere?

Being removed from the actuality of what I study has opened up a huge window into the ignorant bliss of what senators, government officials, and even community organizers—the speakers that made up most of my learning outside of class—would call impracticality. And I wonder, as humbly as this thought would allow me, whether that might be the meaning of college and a liberal arts education. If we can’t even sketch an image of efficiency and justice in a thought vacuum void of real world obstacles and the boundaries of “the way things are supposed to be,” how are we supposed to get out there after four years and imagine a better system to replace whatever is broken?

Over my three years here, much of my writing has served to criticize Harvard, its institutions, and its traditions. But I still love this place. Harvard gives you the thing to criticize and the tools with which to criticize it. My experiment this semester has shown me that much of the philosophy that powers my often incomprehensible babble about this place comes from its syllabi, readings, and brilliant professors. So let me know if you want in on round two.

Jenny J. Choi ’16, is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.