In the Face of Fear

The other day in the dining hall I saw an animal--an overgrown, grotesque beast covered with tangled dark hair, sharp teeth dripping with saliva and long brittle nails evocative of Freddie Kreuger. As I watched him prowl around the dining hall, a hollow hungry look on his face (he must have forgotten his ID card), I wondered why no one else noticed him. Deciding to ignore his foreboding presence, I swiped my card, filled my plate full of chicken fingers and sat down, determined to read my newspaper in peace.

But the beast came to sit across from me. From the look on his face I could tell he wanted to make conversation. Feigning politeness, I asked for his name. "My name?" he snarled, baring his long yellow canines. "My name is Fear. And I am a senior."

As seniors, we are currently feeling the pressure: recruiting season is well underway and already busy schedules are punctuated by interviews. Many companies have given offers and are awaiting decisions, law and medical school acceptances (or rejections) have begun to trickle (or, in some cases, stream) in and, for some of us, the realization has just hit that it is time to start looking for a job.

It makes no difference if one has chosen any of the above, or if one is pursuing an "alternative" route ("alternative" by conservative Harvard standards, anyway). The heat is on and Fear is running rampant--a famished beast among us. No matter how hard you try to avoid him, he will come sit with you in the dining hall; he will stop to question you as you walk down the street (especially if you are dressed nicely and Fear thinks you are going to a meeting or an interview); he will even find you at parties.

He shows up most often in house dining halls, where the conversation centers entirely on what one is doing "next year." The same fearful questions are constantly repeated. "What if I don't get a job?" (Read: What if I don't get the plum consulting job?) "What if I don't get into law school?" (Read: what if I don't get into Harvard or Yale Law?)

Or, alternatively, "I have to find something to do next year." And then there is my personal favorite: "What are you doing next year?" (Each time I hear this, I want to holler, "Objection, your Honor, asked and answered.")

I do not mean to mock these fears. Certainly, the prospect of graduating is daunting. For the first time in our lives, we will no longer have rules put upon us by our parents or professors; we will have to create them for ourselves. We will no longer have a community of friends around us at all times. And for most of us, there is that nagging little issue of (gulp) money.

Still, I find that many of the fears I hear repeated and repeated (and that I often find myself repeating and repeating) are irrational. We fear that the choice we make regarding what we do "next year" is an irrevocable one, that it will somehow define us for life. Yet how many people do you know who are working the same job they took when they graduated from college?

Or perhaps the fear does not result from feeling that what we choose to do "next year" defines us for the rest of our lives, but that the choices available to us define how well we have conducted our lives at Harvard. In some cases this is true--the imprimatur of McKinsey or Morgan Stanley does demonstrate the achievement of a high GPA. Yet a high GPA, a great job offer and an acceptance to the best graduate school don't actually say much about the way we led our lives here at Harvard--or how we will choose to lead them once we leave.

Slicing through the fearful chatter, the real question is this: Should we let what we are doing "next year" define us at all?

Here, I believe, lies the true root of the omnipresent fear. As Harvard students (and likely long before we were Harvard students), our lives, our personalities, ourselves have too often been defined by our accolades and achievements--be they academic, athletic or artistic. A great job or the best law school might be just that: one more feather in our cap that serves to define us.

Our real fear might be that without something (anything!) to define us "next year" we will be lost, confused and unable to define ourselves. The question "What are you doing next year?" is, in fact, rather innocuous. But that question has become synonymous with questions far more threatening: Who are you? What are you worth?

Fear, it is true, can be a positive thing. It has often been called (usually by my mother) a great motivator. But that's the rational kind of fear. The irrational kind currently stalking seniors is of a more menacing sort. At one extreme, it can cause paralysis, rendering us unable to enjoy our final year at Harvard. At the other, it can lead to haste, causing us to make choices that we will later regret. It might even be true that all the "established" paths instill so much fear because for many of us, they may not be the best. The real fear, then, should be that our irrational fears cause us to leave many of our talents, abilities, hopes and dreams unexplored.

It is true that we live in an achievement-based society, and I am not advocating mediocrity. Yet at some point, underneath the job we work at or the school we attend, we must have a core part that defines who we really are. We must be able to know ourselves as people apart from what we do next year or the year after.

To entertain the irrational sort of fear is no way to spend our last days at Harvard (or even your first days). It is no way to spend the rest of our lives. So the next time Fear sidles up and takes a seat across from you in the dining hall, as he prattles on about staying "on track" and finding something to do "next year," interrupt him and ask, How was your day? Have you seen any good movies lately? Have you noticed the sunny weather? Or, if you're feeling really fearless, pick up your tray, push in your chair and refuse to dine with the beast. Prove to yourself that the only thing you have to fear is Fear himself.

Amanda P. Fortini '98 is an English and American Literature and Languages concentrator. She resides in Kirkland House.