Looking Back at the Experiences of the Class of '88

Despite the packaging, posturing and pretensions that went into my candidacy for the Class of '88, the powers that were at Harvard received at least two bits of disturbing insight into my psyche circa 1984. Now I'm not proud of this, but I filled in the last question on the application form. That was the one which asked if we had any special talents or qualities which the admissions committee should be aware of before passing judgment on our young personages.

I thought that I did, so I told them: "I do perhaps the best Bill Murray imitation on the East Coast." This was no idle boast, for my claim, so far as I knew, was true. Having travelled from my home on Long Island as far north as Boston and as far south as Atlanta, I had yet to encounter any fellow youths whose Murray mimicry could rival my own.

Though many tried, not a one could match the loving precision with which I recreated the intonations of Carl Spagler--the cretinous golf course groundskeeper-turned-gopher-killer the future ghostbuster played in Caddys-hack. "Hello? Mr. Gopher? Yeah, hi, it's me, Mr. Rabbit," Carl would say as he dangled a plastic explosive in the shape of a rabbit into the gopher's hole. "I'mnot a plastic explosive or anything."

When my mother came across a photocopy of myapplication with this little bit of dementia onit, she was sure my chances of getting in haddisappeared. But Harvard took me anyway. Thesecond crack in my application armor was revealedonly after I was accepted, so no one could do muchabout it. My parents were aware of this one,though, because they let it slip.

Like all parents of the incoming Class of '88,they were asked the summer before freshman year towrite a little bit about me to help with roomingassignments. My father was the writer in thefamily, and to him fell the task of summing up myexistence in no more than one single-spacedtypewritten page. I was a fine boy, he wrote, afine boy. But though he expressed cautious faithin my adaptibility and sociability, he suggestedit might be best if I were not roomed withclassmates of conservative political orientation.That might cause problems, and problems are bestavoided.

People who know me now probably won't believethis. But, dear reader, you're just going to haveto trust me on this one. In high school my heartbled and my knee jerked with the best of them. InCrimson editorial debates, on the otherhand, I was from the start, against my desires orintentions, cast on the right. I've developed areputation in Crimson circles, at least, asan incipient neo-conservative. This I deny, and ifany of you wish to talk about it, you know whereto reach me.

Yet I cannot deny two things. The way I thinkabout things has changed. And I've always been twodifferent people at home and at school. Now thatthis distinction is about to be dissolved, I haveto begin figuring out which one is me. The beautyand charm of going away to college is the processof self-understanding that is forced upon you. Theugly danger lies in the odd chance that you mightnot like what you see.

Some time early in April, I started calling myold friends from high school more frequently thanI had done in the previous three years. We all hadkept in touch, and every year, come vacation timewe would resume our cliquey ways. But when atcollege, we tended to become absorbed in ourdifferent worlds.

By April, though, I began to realize that theperfunctory once-a-month phone calls were becomingmore frequent and more substantive. As we werefacing the future, my old friends and I wereinstinctively reaching back into the past.

Since Thanksgiving of freshman year, I havebeen aware of how easy it is to forget one worldwhen you're living in another. I always feltmyself instantly gliding into my respectivepersonas and roles as soon as I moved from oneworld into the other. At the same time, the otherworld immediately receded from memory andconsciousness.

I don't have any desire to return to my highschool days and ways, and I'm not allowed to gothrough Harvard again. Why, then, the groping backto my older friends as an uncertain futureapproached? Home has always been more real to methan college. The ties there bind ever so muchmore tightly than those made at Harvard.

Before he was elected president, Woodrow Wilsonbecame famous as the president of Princeton andthe governor of New Jersey. But he grew up asTommy Wilson in Virginia. Though he left theSouth, the South never left him. He was once askedin his later years about his attachment to aregion in which he had not lived for decades. "Inthe South," he replied, "nothing has to beexplained to me."

Nothing has to be explained to me when I'mhome, either. But I mean this in more than just acultural sense. It's bothered me that I've neverfelt I could duplicate at college the friendshipsI had at home. It seems to me a physical, mentaland temporal impossiblity. There are kids I grewup with who I've not spoken to or socialized within years. Yet were I to get together with themtoday, I would still feel that I knew them betterthan I know anybody here.

I know all about their first-grade foibles,their nicknames in sixth grade and the fights theygot into with their older brothers or sisters. Idon't care how much we think we have changed,those things still matter. They are thicker, theyresonate more than the things you can learn atcollege, where everyone has the chance to reinventthemselves. This is no doubt liberating for many,but it requires a severing with the past thatcannot be cost free.

Freshman year is the closest thing to atabula rasa any of us are likely ever to bea part of. History and memory don't have to matterif we don't want them to. Cast into this vortex,however, I flailed about. I was like an electronin the new physics. Here one second, there a splitsecond later, I was all over the place and nowhereat once. I left no traces. Late night bullsessions for me were usually about political--notpersonal--first principles as I resisted makingpersonal revelations or admitting to anyunhappiness or imperfection. The closestembodiment of ironic detachment this side of DavidLetterman, I was conscious of my inordinateself-consciousness (meta, no?), yet unaware of howmiserable I was. At least Dave had his TV show.

I had had my eyes on The Crimson beforeI was a freshman and was at the first comp meetingfreshman week. So, too, was a good portion of myclassmates. Intimidated, I sucked down one or twoof the beers they fed us and made a beeline out ofthe place. I also went to the Lampoon compmeeting and the same thing happened. I was afraidof failure, of not measuring up to snuff at thefamous institutions of the Big H. Afraid that Icouldn't do things well, I chose not to do them atall.

My recognition that if I were to do TheCrimson at all I would have to go at itfull-throttle also kept me away. That scared me,as did the horror stories of cut classes and lastminute maniacal cram sessions. As sophomore yearbegan, though, I decided to comp theCrimson's editorial board. It seemed theeasy way out--I could write short opinion piecesand get on the paper without going bonkers doingthe news comp.

Events kept me away from that comp, but byThanksgiving ambition and despair compelled mefinally to hitch on with The Crimson.Fortunately and unfortunately, my mocking disdainand unrepentant snidery enabled me to fit right inat 14 Plympton St. I had been floating throughHarvard for a year and a semester, but TheCrimson provided me with a personal and socialballast

I made friends and won valuable prizes atThe Crimson. But the atmosphere andattitude of the place, Which I soaked up andspewed back out, began to feel more and moreempty. In trying to make sense of this emptiness,I think I have come to understand--if notreconcile--the disparate tendencies within me, theconservative and the liberal the college studentand the homeboy.

What turned me off from the liberal politics ofThe Crimson was the utter certainty withwhich my colleagues held their opinions. They werenot only certain of what they thought, but of whateveryone else should think. What's changed in mehas been the cessation of my quest for certaintyor perfection. I don't expect it of myself or ofothers.

It was this desire to know everything beforecommitting myself that made me a vegetablefreshman year. I did not admit any variables intomy life or my politics. If I thought something, itwas possible and correct. If something wasrational to me, then surely it could and shouldhave been real and meaningful to everyone else.

One friend thinks that the desire--need?--to beliked is in itself an imperfection, a sign ofcowardice almost. Needless to say, I disagree.Getting along with others need not be the same asgoing along with them. Perhaps the most importantthing I have learned is when and how to shut up.Not every clever or cutting remark needs to gosaid. It's scary when I think of the cruel thingsI have said to people towards whom I felt nomalice. Given the set-up, I could not resist thepunchline.

I hope what I've been able to do is learn howto take what I do seriously, but myself less so.That's a distinction not always easy to maintain,but one that is nonetheless essential. But that'sthe only way the experience of living--and livingwith others--can displace the futile anddispiriting search for ultimate meaning as areason for getting out of bed in the morning. Thatis one thing, at least, of which I am certain.

Steven Lichtman was the '87-'88 deputyeditorial chairman of The Crimson.CrimsonAnh T. Nguyen-HuynhSTEVEN LICHTMAN '88