Endpaper

My days bore and frighten me at the same time. I say they bore because they are full of routines, and because I simply have not come to terms with the whole idea of being at Harvard University, school of the free and home of the brave. I say they frighten because I look around me and see that I am sitting still in a very fast-paced world. While I contemplate my problems or my inadequacies, I am letting unique opportunities go unexplored.

Like everyone else here, I left a substantial existence at home. I remember the familiarity with which I would walk across our high school parking lot after the final bell, shirt untucked and backpack carelessly flung on my shoulder. It was easy to be happy then, when I knew the ways of the old place and had adjusted accordingly. I could go through entire weeks without a serious worry, and that is pretty impressive, if you know how much I worry.

"Why are you getting so worked up?" I would ask my friends, as they left for college in late summer. "We'll see each other again at Christmastime." One by one they left, and I bade all a firm goodbye. Lives must go on, I said. There are many experiences to be had. But on the night before my own flight out, I sat down at my desk. My bags were packed, my room was straightened, and I had even thought to leave a picture of myself on my dresser. It was a photo shot by a friend last February, just as I was about to take my first steps into Harvard. I liked the neat symbolism of it all, you know, leaving that particular picture as I prepared to take my first real steps into the University. My mom would enjoy it, because she thinks the world of me and likes it when I extend such small gestures. Kind of like the time one Mother's Day when I left a big stack of debate evidence lying on the coffee table. She would disgustedly pick up the big pile, I knew, and find the little red-paper note I had left under it on the table. "What have I done to deserve a mom as great as mom?" it asked.

So I left the picture on the dresser, as one small way of saying thank-you to the parents who have given to me so selflessly. And when I had positioned the frame just right, I sat down and thought about what was happening. I am leaving home now, and I will never again live here permanently.

I opened a card that my sister had slipped me quietly that night before going to bed. She had inscribed a quote from Theodore Roosevelt on the inside cover. Happy are those who live life to its flushed, excited, chaotic fullest, he said. To live in the shadows, to be afraid of failure, is the greatest mistake. I had only rarely done my best as a big brother, and this thought struck me hard as I began to cry.

I arrived in Cambridge over a month ago, unsure of what to expect from the College Experience, and I feel badly because it was just recently that my mind finally caught up to my body. Although I am loathe to admit it, I think that Harvard intimidated me to the point that I lost some of my identity and forgot my sister's advice (via Teddy Roosevelt). I remember reading Julian Barnes' essay in the pre-frosh materials, and I marveled at the time that the President of the Crimson had been afraid to speak up in section as a first-year. Such timidity is reserved for regular guys like me, isn't it?

No. I came to Harvard because I was convinced that it was the best school in the country, and I now realize that I waste an opportunity every time I shrink from its challenges. It sounds so elementary and trite, but I often forget that I owe the world nothing more than my effort. If I expend myself and do not "measure up," then perhaps I am misdirecting my energy. Perhaps I need to look somewhere else.

I cannot yet claim such a quixotic position, though, because I have not worked very hard here, and I have engaged in soft living for which the Calvinist founders of Harvard would undoubtedly have had a remedy. Unlike some of my classmates, I still do not have the self-confidence to laugh at our school's old Puritan roots. In many ways, those roots reflect my own values.

In high school. I would purify myself after a night of weakness with a hard run. The pounding and sweat of five miles would offer no escape, and I dealt with my weakness squarely. Now, after such nights, I simply wake up and go to breakfast at the Union.

So you see why I have been bored and frightful. I feel victim to myself.

I know that I must break this malaise with my own will, and I have started trying. Resisting inertia is no easy task, though, and each new morning brings its own challenges. Do I have to read this chapter in the source-book? Will these optional problems really help me? Must I go to the gym and work out? The myriad of questions, frustratingly enough, lacks a satisfying number of answers.

And so I progress through my first semester at Harvard. These days, I think frequently of a Nike advertisement I once saw: "Ten million decibels loud. And it doesn't care if you're tired. Or if it's our birthday. Or if it's some holiday honoring a saint. So, though you'd rather not, you start down the road again. The road--when it calls, it screams. Just do it."

I hope I can.