Bleeding Crimson
Home(less) at Harvard
And for a long time, I tried to avoid calling that place home. It was the room, the dorm, my bed. It was like when you tell someone not to think of an elephant and they begin describing a gray hide, a snaking nose, ivory tusks under flapping ears—but deny the image its rightful name. A portrait without a frame, if you will. My home had always been my little green room of five paces by two, nothing more, nothing less. Yet, my will eventually caved. We took a group picture. I bought a frame. Weeks sprouted roots, months began to grow under the skylight, and soon enough I had to change my idea of what was home, or how many homes one could have without the word losing its weight.
Summer as a Status Symbol
Yet, most Harvard students don’t experience this summer. This isn’t to say that the antithesis of this lax watercolor is the bane of all imaginable summers. It’s the opposite actually—the vast amount of interests that are pursued throughout the summer by various students are quite laudable. Studying abroad, doing research in laboratories, interning at important causes and with notable companies, cultivating their own businesses—the list extends from there. Summertime activities help to give context to what a student is interested in and will continue to pursue throughout their time here. However, the activities each student chooses to participate in—or, more appropriately, has the opportunity to participate in—can be a representation of and status symbol in the elitism omnipresent at Harvard.
Harvard on a Friday Night
The night has cracked open and yolk is smeared across the sky as many young Lamonsters close their textbooks and feel for the braille on their foreheads, reminding them to get to class. Thursday has unfurled into Friday under the limelight of library desk lamps, yet again. These student know the drill by now: The walk of shame from the library to the classroom is easy, as though their soles have been trained to follow this path. They walk on eggshells as the day unfolds into the afternoon and the afternoon leaks into the night. Another weekend arrives like Atlas shrugging to lift the stress of the week before it. The two day vacation promises to be a reprieve from the craze that might be associated with the typical flotsam and jetsam of an academic week at Harvard.
