Searching for Excellence
Trouble In Hogwarts
When I read the words, “Dear Mr. Piltch, Congratulations! On behalf of the Admissions Committee, I am delighted to offer you admission to the Harvard Class of 2017,” I remember an excited shout escaping my throat because I was going to Harvard. At that time, however, I had little appreciation for what going to Harvard meant. I saw it as a real life version of a Harry Potter book: all different people from all different places (practically) doing magic to solve the world’s problems. I would never be alone and would meet no challenge I could not handle. Somehow, in this wonderland, the tough moments of feeling alone, being overwhelmed by or not understanding my work, and being disconnected from friends did not exist.
A recent Crimson article, “The State of the Student Body,” makes it clear that these struggles exist not only for me but also many of my peers. Seventy percent of us do not sleep enough. Many of us do not exercise enough, and I imagine that some of us struggle with disordered eating. I am also confident that stress has unquantifiable effects on our friendships and other relationships. Though we may not realize it, the difficult moments and enormous sums of work we have dictate our lives more than we might have anticipated or currently want.
The Time of Choosing
When I walk into the Barker Center, the home of the humanities on our campus, I feel excited about the challenges and opportunities that await me. Whether a discussion about the merit of comic books as literature or a heated debate on the slave trade ensues, I find myself forced to think about my values, my opinions, and the construction of my world. Not surprisingly, I frequently leave the building with a pounding headache and a small smile on my face. The two go hand-in-hand: The days that the content makes my head hurt the most are also the days that I most appreciate what I study.
I hope that all of my fellow students also feel challenged by their courses but still find happiness in those moments when the information or question at hand may be too difficult to handle (at least temporarily). What I do not want and what I find limiting, however, is competing over which field of study is the hardest or most valuable.
In Search of Lost Time
Sometimes when I look at mine and my friend’s Google Calendars, I wonder if what I am seeing is real. From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., there are blocks for showering and eating both in blue, a few classes in green, maybe a nap in yellow. From three onward, the fun begins: there are meetings for extracurricular activities in red, a space for working out in yellow, a time for dinner with a friend in red, and a few hours of homework in green. Most days have little to no white space in them. There are even days when I have scheduled my sleep in a bright yellow box, a sign that I possibly do not trust myself to stop working if I do not remind myself I need to. I love my work. I love my extracurricular activities. Above all, I love my friends. And yet, I still ask myself, “Why do I make myself so ridiculously busy?”
Though I am not sure that I know the answer for myself, let alone my peers, I feel like our constant state of busyness relates to our pursuit of excellence. A belief that percolates through campus that it’s not enough for us to do a lot or to do what we do well. Instead, we must do a lot well. Furthermore, and maybe most importantly, I know I sometimes think I need to make it look like everything I do is effortless, as if functioning on minimal sleep, having hundreds of pages of reading, and three meetings does not overwhelm me in any way.
Making the Grade
UPDATED: October 9, 2014, at 11:56 a.m.
I can vividly remember the slew of questions that everyone asks each other during Opening Days: “Where are you from? What’s your main extracurricular activity? What were your SATs and AP scores?” The last question stood out to me the most. Here I was, at Harvard, and it seemed as though within our first weeks together, we were trying establish the merit of our own place here and where we all ranked relative to one another.
The Difficulty of Defining Difficulty
UPDATED: September 26, 2014, at 11:32 a.m.
This past summer, Harvard announced that it would remove difficulty scores from the Q-Guide. Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay Harris said that “these changes reflect the decisions of the Faculty Council that were intended to make the Q a more accurate, sophisticated, and helpful mechanism for learning about and choosing courses.” Much of students' outrage centers upon the idea that we have the right to know this information and to choose classes as we please. I have a question for Jay Harris and the students of Harvard though that might alter the discussion on removing difficulty from the Q: How do we, as Harvard students and faculty members, define difficulty?