ell me, muse, of a complicated shuttle system of many twists and turns, designed to take Harvard students from where they are to where they need to be.

1:54 p.m.: As I leave my homeland of Dunster House and walk toward the Harvard Kennedy School shuttle stop, the wild wonders of the world call to me: the glittering Charles River, the heat of the afternoon sun, the soft west wind. The scene is picturesque. The Citymapper app is running. The QUADYSSEY is about to begin.

What’s in a quest? For Odysseus, epic hero of “The Odyssey,” the answer is evident: a 10-year journey back to his native land of Ithaca following the Greeks’ victory in the Trojan War. Other heroes of various mythical and epic proportions also undertake quests, each with varying degrees of success: Gilgamesh seeks immortality, Beowulf slays monsters, and Harvard heroes rile in opposition as Amanda Claybaugh cracks her umbridgian whip down on grade point averages.

Though the prognosis for each hero’s journey differs, the diagnosis is the same: each ventures out for want of a “lack.” A “lack” can be anything a hero needs or thinks they need, be it an object, a goal, or a journey. To identify what is lacking, we ask the hero to set down their sword and open the cabinet doors of their life, combing through bits and baubles to discover what lies amiss. I hadn’t discovered what I was missing, but in embarking on THE QUADYSSEY, I was sure to find out.

One must note that not all quests are created equal. For epic heroes, the quest is a life-defining journey, one that can take years or even decades. (Odysseus’s journey lasts 20 years, which is coincidentally around the same amount of time Christopher Nolan spent drumming up The Odyssey before its theatrical release.) What of the everyday person, who simply doesn’t have the time for an epic journey — but still dreams of doom, destiny, and danger? Enter: the side quest.

The term “side quest” originates from video games, where side quests are optional adventures one can undertake while completing the main storyline. This year, social media latched onto the trend with gusto: a cursory search reveals creators using side quests to churn out carousels of “whimsical,” “fun,” or “loremaxxed” pursuits to remedy boredom. Now, there’s a word for people online and in real life to discuss the novel concept of “trying new things.”

Young people everywhere are indulging in such wanderlust, and Harvard students are no exception. Recently, my House mailing list was blasted with a “Friendsmaxxing/side quests gcal,” linking to a Google Calendar where people could embark on local events and challenges together. The invite also included a group chat with more than 60 people who could plan side quests. In the two weeks since I joined, no one has proposed one.

2:16 p.m.: Something is amiss — namely, the shuttle, which is running about five minutes late. Finally, I board, and the bus sputters into motion. I occupy myself by reading Letterboxd reviews of Nolan’s epic film.

One reviewer describes the movie as a “miniseries about a guy riding the megabus home after TSA bans him for doing January 6.”

Odysseus and I might have more in common than I think.

2:43 p.m.: No one tells you how motion sick you might get from riding a bus for three hours. My desire to read the Homeric epic is losing to my growing desires to hurl on the book — I haven’t even gotten through the first page.

In despair, I text my friend, who is following THE QUADYSSEY from the comfort of his phone: I don’t think I’m resilient enough to busssickness for this.

He responds: You think odysseus didn’t get a little sea sick?

Half an hour later, THE QUADYSSEY is interrupted by none other than the Quad shuttle itself. My driver delivers a Poseidon-worthy blow, informing me that I’ll have to continue my journey on another shuttle because he is going on break. At 3:22 p.m., I wash ashore unceremoniously at Barry’s Corner. If there is one thing worse than motion sickness, it is suffering from residual motion sickness under the hot afternoon sun.

Still, Poseidon’s curse be damned! I need to see my journey through to the very end.

3:52 p.m.: While waiting at the bus stop, I find a marooned comrade in Nihal V. Nayak, a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He’s on his regular commute home from the SEC to memorial hall: my quest is, for him, a near daily fixture of his life. We exchange stories – I recount my entire journey up until this point, and when the shuttle arrives, he shows me his usual post in the first seat right above the stairs. At one point, he suggests I attempt THE QUADYSSEY multiple times, at different points of the day, to get a better sample size of the shuttle experience.

I nod in response to his Calypsian temptation. I have a sense that I will not be attempting THE QUADYSSEY again.

4:50 p.m.: Nearing the end of THE QUADYSSEY, my efficiency as a reporter decreases considerably: I alternate between skimming pages of the Odyssey, lying supine on not two, but three shuttle seats, and staring out the window longing for the feeling of sidewalk beneath my feet.

I call a friend to tell him of my woes. You could leave and no one needs to know, he tells me. And he’s right: the last 20 minutes of this journey really don’t matter — in fact, THE QUADYSSEY itself offers very little value to human society (besides the contribution of my personal suffering). Still, like any good filmgoer, I elect to stay until the final credits roll.

At the end of a quest, even the hero must return home to the ordinary world. In epic poetry, this is called nostos, the return of a hero, often by sea.

Still, a return to the everyday doesn’t mean that life remains the same. When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca after 20 years, he has spent so long away from the land that he scarcely recognizes it. There, the question is: has home changed, or has he?

5:07 p.m.: In a stroke of luck (perhaps divine intervention from Athena herself), the shuttle arrives at the Kennedy School stop just as my timer hits 2 hours and 52 minutes. I leap off in a tizzy and collapse in a disoriented haze in front of 21 South St., alarming a nearby bystander.

I am dehydrated, nauseous, and weary — but I have traversed the innermost circle of hell (the Radcliffe Quadrangle), fought my monsters (motion sickness), made friends (accosted unsuspecting passengers), and returned just in time to tell the tale.

Knowing this, I walk home with a certain lightness, taking the same path, greeted by the same river. The world around me stays the same.

In truth, THE QUADYSSEY was never about the Quad or “The Odyssey.” I failed spectacularly on all of my objectives. I a) didn’t finish reading The Odyssey, b) got kicked off the bus, and c) switched to the Allston Loop halfway through, meaning I did not spend much time in the Quad at all.

Skeptics of the side quest will point out these things, along with the fact that riding the quad shuttle one time (albeit, for a very long time) was never going to change my life. In the grand scheme of things, 2 hours and 52 minutes of shuttle-hopping is no time at all: in that time, you could go on two mediocre coffee dates, walk from Harvard Square to the Allston Trader Joe’s and back four times, or sit through a long-winded seminar class. One shuttle driver I spoke to, Gil E. Perez, has been driving the shuttle for eight years, eight hours a day.

However, when I think about what compelled me to take on THE QUADYSSEY and what draws one to a side quest, I am reminded of novelist Katie Kitamura’s essay in The Yale Review. There, she discusses her decision to purchase a set of doorknobs, but wonders why she never installed them. She asks: “How often are we dissuaded from desire on the basis of its absurdity”?

By definition, a side quest does not affect the main storyline of a game. Its appeal might lie in the fact that the stakes are lowered, almost comically so.

At Harvard, decisions rarely feel pointless, and each thing you choose to do seems like a defining point in your life. Choice of class, choice of concentration, choice of student organization A, B, or C, choice of summer internship. These choices yell at us: What have you chosen to do with your time in college? What will you do beyond?

People usually don’t change their life because of a side quest. The quantifiable benefits of such efforts are of no real significance — not in the face of the bigger existential challenges we will encounter. But until we have taken on the call to adventure for ourselves, a side quest remains an unknown variable: two novelty doorknobs sitting inside of a dark closet.

—Staff writer Jona P. Liu can be reached at [email protected]