Recalling the Summer of '86

I came to Harvard Summer School before my senior year of high school for two reasons. One was to get away from home. The other, I'm ashamed to say, was to secure an impressive-looking entry on my resume so that I could get in to the Real Harvard.

To my disappointment, I heard after arriving here that the admissions office gives no more weight to Harvard Summer School than to any other summer programs. And the escape factor wasn't the liberating experience I had hoped it would be. My proctor was stricter about rules than my parents ever were.

But what I quickly discovered was that my time at the Summer School was valuable in itself, apart from any escape or credential-building value.

After eight weeks of being exposed to people from all over the world with backgrounds wildly different from mine, I began to learn that there was some-thing beyond the sleepy New England suburb I grew up in.

ONE of my roommates had lived all of his life in a Los Angeles barrio and had never travelled outside of California or northwestern Mexico. Gerardo's dad harvested oranges for a living.

Another roommate was the son of a mega-rich Greek financier. Thomas was always full of stories about trips to the French Riviera, complete with stops at chic European night clubs.

Unfortunately, I didn't meet too many people outside of my home in Canaday D. It turns out that one of my best friends now at Harvard lived in Thayer--one dorm over from me--the entire summer, and I didn't lay eyes on him once.

But the handful of students I met were incredibly different from any I had encountered before. Even my professors, with whom I had very little contact, showed me there were teachers beyond the straight-laced ones I had always known.

One of my professors was a self-avowed Marxist. I'll never forget my initial excitement over the novelty of being taught by someone who espoused all the values I had been virtually innoculated against from birth. But what I first viewed almost as a joke became a lesson in tolerance and appreciation of intellectual diversity.

TALKING with those people and living in an academic environment spurred me, for the first time in my life, to question my comfortable assumptions. Under the barrage of new experiences, I couldn't help but alter the way I viewed the world.

In fact, I came to Harvard Summer School a Republican and left a Democrat. I guess I'm a walking parody of President Bush's worst fears about the transforming power of Harvard's liberal boutique.

I shouldn't exaggerate the magnitude of the reversal. My political slide to the left had actually started before I first walked through Johnston Gate, and, to the shame of my parents, probably continues to this day.

But the move was clearly accelerated by my time at Harvard where faculty and fellow students convinced me to appreciate the potential for change.

As far as my ostensible purpose at the summer school, I really didn't learn much from my coursework at all. I never made an effort to go to my professors' office hours or delve into the ideas beyond the normal coursework. Looking back, I lost out by not approaching my professors because Summer School faculty are usually very accessible.

Real Harvard professors are too busy to teach summer school. Senior faculty spend the summer jetting around the world and having lunch with top government officials. Junior professors spend the summer months frantically attempting to churn out the reams of published material you need to get a lifetime post here.

So to fill the breach, a motley and eclectic crew called the Summer School faculty steps in. Gathered from a variety of colleges, they all come here to teach, a motivation found in only a handful of Real Harvard faculty.

THE nature of the faculty aside, however, the real education at Harvard Summer School comes from getting accustomed to new people and a new town. They don't call it Camp Harvard for nothing. The workload is very light (there's no way in hell it constitutes a full semester load), and academic obligations never precluded me from exploring the city.

When I returned to good old suburban high school U.S.A. that fall, I was restless. After a taste of college life I found it impossible to slip back into the old high school grind.

I've lost touch with my summer school friends now, and my course grades were so bad that I never bothered to fill out the form to get Real Harvard credit for them. But my summer at Harvard was still definitely worth it.