What Your Concentration Says About You

By Sarah E Orlando

The annual Advising Fortnight, designed to give freshmen a look at Harvard’s 49 different concentrations (rumor has it that “Bragging About How Stressed You Are” was just approved by the College), just came to a close. By now freshmen have had a chance to weigh their options and judge what path might be best for them. Now it’s Flyby’s turn to do what we do best: judge people based on cursory information.

Any kind of Biology - Let us guess, pre-med track? Let us guess again: You’re interested in human development and regenerative biology? How original. You’re smart, but you’re about as typical a Harvard student as we’re going to find. Side note: At least be hilarious and concentrate in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.

Physics - You own at least two graphic tees—one with a periodic table and another with Einstein’s head and some caption that you think is witty but most (normal) people don’t understand. You were also wishing to get placed into Leverett on Housing Day (sorry if that didn’t work out).

Mechanical Engineering - You have bags under your eyes, and you’ve been stress-eating recently. It’s OK; you get used to the p-sets eventually (I think—I’m an English concentrator).

Mathematics - We could say anything right now; reading a commoner’s publication like Flyby won’t help you theorize about Fermat’s Last Theorem (yes, we had to Wikipedia that).

Applied Mathematics - Your first memory is of completing a Sudoku puzzle.

Economics - You’ve posted at least one status while taking Ec10, in which you’ve recklessly complained about how you disagree with N. Gregory Mankiw even though he’s your professor. You’ve also never taken a midterm without claiming that “totally failed it” so that you don’t get your hopes up.

English - You have an affinity for tweed jackets and leather chairs. You also probably talk with your hands and chuckle inwardly when you mention a little-known book (“Burning Bright” by John Steinbeck, anyone?) to your engineering roommate and he/she hasn’t read it.

Literature - See above, but you also lament how “totally mainstream” the English concentration is.

Folklore and Mythology - Wait, we think we’re psychic now—you won’t find a job in your field. Better make the most of your electives and secondary. Also, you’ve probably listened to an angry Classics concentrator talk about how your department makes theirs look less serious.

Government - Athletes?

Earth and Planetary Sciences - For at least one summer, you tried going shoeless because shoes are a human construct that limits our connection with the Earth and makes us callous towards things like pollution and global warming.

Long story short, you can make fun of every concentration at Harvard (especially the ones with funny names). Don’t let the potential insults stop you from picking whatever concentration suits your fancy, and never forget that there’s always a concentration worse than yours (it’s called being a Yale graduate).