Race for Careers Slows Learning

What do you want to be when you grow up? Ah, the classic childhood question. "A clown in the circus," I would reply to relatives at family gatherings. Well, it is now 1996, and I am twenty years old--a clown in the circus is just not where I am headed. That's okay, I assure myself--no one is expected to know the precise academic and professional course his or her life will take at such early stages in the game. Correction: No one outside of Harvard is assumed to possess such foresight. But amid the red-bricked buildings of Cambridge, we are not only expected but required to predict what we see ourselves doing for a while, if not forever.

It begins during the first year at Harvard: to be pre-med or not pre-med? If you have known since you were in your mother's womb that you wanted to be a doctor, then this is no biggie. But if you want to practice medicine, and yet you also love American history or French literature or John Locke, then this decision is monumental. Essentially it asks: Do I hereby hand over a significant portion of my college education to some intro-level science and math courses which will be tremendous sources of frustration and boredom? Or, phrased more generally: Do I sacrifice the life-enriching privileges of a liberal arts education for a possible or likely career goal?

Juggling the pre-med act with a non-science concentration can leave you regretful of the mediocre freshman seminar you took, a wasted elective. If only you had known the summer before your first year that a meaningless pass/fail class would mean one less elective when you were older. Or let's go back even earlier--if only you had known in high school that you would want to be pre-med and then had taken some chemistry, biology, math or physics AP tests so as to open more slots in college.

Frustrating "only ifs" remind us how tightly budgeted our time here is. Declaring a concentration at the end of the first year, (a relatively premature time to have developed a narrow scope of interest) leaves one with little time to roam the college fields of study. Maybe I had dishonest parents or deceitful first-year advisers, but I was told to take a bit of everything--there is no rush to decide. Sure, I can take my time, maybe put off pre-med until after college and then add two more years to the already too-long trek to medical school. Why not grab a last minute Ph.D. in European history on the way?

Moving beyond the concerns specific to pre-med students, I am struck by how rushed we are to make decisions. A Harvardesque standard of fluency in a language is required in order to study abroad. But what if you realize in the second semester of your sophomore year that you would love to go to Florence for your junior year but have never taken Italian? I guess you can take day trips to Florence from England, but most likely you will just shrug your shoulders and say, "Oh well, maybe when I graduate." And yet, there is no way to know as a first-year that in two years you might desperately crave a break from oh-so-suffocating Harvard and crimson-tainted Cambridge.

What about us juniors? Grants...thesis...thesis advisors. They feel so far off. It is deceptive, because it is called a senior thesis, and yet if you decide only in your senior year that you will write one, say hello to your graduate student advisor and to a topic which does not require research overseas. Remember all those grants your friends were applying for in February and March of junior year? Now you remember, but again, it is too late.

Your classmates have been researching all summer, have snagged that professor who is so perfect for your topic and probably got paid in the process. Sophomores, be advised--do not await departmental instructions about the appropriate pace for the thesis project. Such advising exists for the utterly clueless group of students who are under the impression that no one in their class has a real topic yet. I know it is hard to believe, but most have an advisor even before the "how to choose an advisor" seminar.

We are on a treadmill, and the slowdown button does not work. The only advising we receive our first year is from a residential proctor (except for those privileged few who have nonresidential academic advisors). The likelihood of sharing any common academic interests with this person is slim. Many of us are therefore left running around frantically in April to assemble the concentration form and plan of study.

While it is only a formality, the very insistence on having a first-year complete a list of the courses he or she plans to take in the next four years is absurd. How can we possibly know at that point if our interests will remain unchanged? But you can always switch majors, they deceitfully tell you--sure, from biochemistry to biology, not from biology to Persian studies and not from psychology to history and literature--at least not if you are hoping to graduate with your class.

I used to think that all kids had the same silly, dream-like goals. I wanted to be an astronaut, a magician, a dancer, a baseball player, a movie star. I was wrong. The feeling I get from many here is that they have known exactly what they were going to be long before I had learned to talk. Medical journals and Heidegger-perfect reading material for the potty. All kidding aside, having one's life planned out at such early ages, whether by oneself or with the "help" of one's parents, is an unfortunate way to live. To assume you will not change nor grow interested in new ideas leads to a strict adherence to a prematurely arranged code. Not only do such students leave the undecided at a disadvantage, but they prevent the system from proving itself at fault.

The speed at which we are expected to proceed through our Harvard years is not conducive to the mind-expanding and enlightening experiences that college life ought to provide. And yet, not enough of us realize that the speed is too fast. Too many of us have been able to complete the plan-of-study form since eighth grade. Too many have a thesis topic when they enter Harvard. Too many know exactly what field of interest they would like to pursue and therefore need little time to dabble.

How many people do you know who actually need to "shop around" during the first week of the semester? "Shopping week" is just another misleading formality to make us and our parents proud that we in fact open our minds in unexpected directions during our stay at Harvard. The most unfortunate part of this picture is that too many of these people are right. They do end up just where they thought they would, just where they planned they would.

It is in this sense that the system feeds off itself. Whether in the New York Times Magazine's Sunday cover story about the Harvard class of 2000 or in such articles as New York magazine's "Give Me Harvard or Give Me Death," the discrimination with which Harvard chooses each class makes the world believe that we are situated in some society of supermen and women. Harvard has agreed to bestow its once-in-a-lifetime college experience on us, the most unique pool of students in the country. We are assumed to be the exemplars of well-roundedness, or else we might never have been granted acceptance. We cannot possibly be a mere collection of lopsided, talent-specific individuals, but we must each know about a plethora of subjects. Maybe according to our grandmothers that is true, but in reality we are unable to step outside our itsy-bitsy space of academic interest.

Harvard takes in a whole slew of students who have little need of and desire for a well rounded education, but know immediately the narrow academic existence they will lead over the next four years. Harvard has made itself the perfect school for these types. Whatever one's personal opinion of the Core, we all know the ways to get around it. One can get by without taking a real literature class or an expansive history course. To get a multi-faceted education you must want it really badly. Why so badly? Because there is not enough time to leisurely roam through the spectrum of courses. We come in with a specific focus and we go out with it having been narrowed. No time to know there is an upcoming presidential election. No time to "Take Back the River." No time to take advantage of Arts First. No time to be the person in that well-rounded portrait we painted on our application.

Nothing will happen to the childhood planners if the treadmill slows down. If anything, Harvard might do them a favor by lessening the sense of urgency which is currently driving them through life. By decelerating, they might find themselves rethinking some of the decisions they made in those early years and spending some time on the unplanned.

Let Harvard provide an enlightening detour to those who would otherwise race through unknowingly, rather than penalizing those who are not eager to sprint. Let its education enrich our character and not merely put a stamp on the person we have always planned to be. Let a slower Harvard pace make the runners pause for reflection rather than having the rapidly-moving pack leave the walkers out of breath.

Erica S. Schacter '97 will be seeking a summer internship with Ringling Brothers.