You’ve probably heard a thing or two about how Harvard students allegedly don't attend class. Well… let’s look at the facts: Students wouldn’t be here if they weren’t hard workers. So the real question is: What if professors graded based on what they’re actually mastering? Forget exams — here are 6 things that Harvard students are actually doing (a.k.a. the classes they cannot escape).

Pursuing a Secondary in Waiting for the Shuttle

The shuttle app has been — and will always be — the true syllabus of any class. In trying to catch the shuttle, students are developing advanced theories of time, motion, and despair while watching “Arriving in three minutes” sits on the screen for 15, which is just the amount of time the walk would have taken anyways. One senior is reportedly writing their thesis on “The Ontology of PassioGO!” See? Just because students are not in class doesn’t mean they aren’t learning. They’re simply expanding the classroom to include the shuttle but not by choice.

Competing in Free Food Foraging

A true interdisciplinary sport: Anthropology meets economics meets survival instinct. Students track every House email list, every Google Calendar alert, and every poster pasted on the wall, sprinting across campus to claim bagels, pizza, and sushi from talks they didn’t want to attend. And in the end, maybe they end up missing a class or two because the real event started and you can’t dine and dash…

Running for just one more Board Position! (Hint: it’s their fifth)

Students are running from their academics by applying to positions with acronyms no one understands: “I’m actually the VP of HCEBHRFM — it’s chill.” (“It’s chill” means it takes 40 hours a week on top of the four jobs they already have.) Harvard students don’t rest. They’re up until 4 a.m. doing their homework, then going on to change the world, write manifestos, and send follow-up emails. The grind never stops, it just refreshes its Gmail tab.

…Speaking of Gmail

Students are valiantly fighting to stay on top of the 15,000 emails that arrived in their inbox at 9 a.m. From professors sending messages about something (I forgot) to an email from their parents (yes, we have parents) to yet another notification from the New York Times (they can kiss my Harvard diploma) — it is a monster that just keeps growing.

Re-centering their lives around the Fly-By Grab-and-Go line

Who needs office hours when you can study the sociology of waiting in the lunch line that snakes through the Annenberg basement? Sixty students, one HUDS worker, zero chance of making it to lecture on time. Harvard’s truest community is forged in that 20-minute wait. The real section discussion happens there.

Practicing mindfulness (of sorts)

Harvard students are nothing if not self-aware. Between bursts of productivity, they make time for grounding exercises: five minutes of deep breathing in the Yard, nervously pacing walking the entire Quad lawn, or crying in the Lamont bathroom (yes, I’ve done this before). It’s all about balance. One minute, you’re reading Kant; the next, you’re practicing acceptance as your Canvas fails to load and you miss that 11:59pm deadline.

So if professors really want to measure our academic commitment, they should stop counting attendance and start counting in terms of Flyby’s (obviously better) metric. A in shuttle philosophy. A- in inbox management. B+ in mindfulness (with extra credit for crying in Lamont).