Seniors Know Best

With the exceptions of first-semester first-years, perhaps, Harvard students of all years tend to think they have a good command of this institution, that their knowledge of the Harvard Experience is relatively complete regardless of the stage of it at which they actually find themselves. Thus a sophomore is overheard explaining to someone how the social scene at Harvard works, or a junior feels she truly understands what the value of writing a senior thesis is.

While these attempts are noble, more often than not, they are also wrong. The reason is that at Harvard there is an ascending scale of knowledge that corresponds more or less directly to the year you are in, so that second-semester seniors are the only students who really understand what Harvard is about. We are the only students on campus whose knowledge in matters Harvard and matters college is complete.

I realize that this argument will no be terribly well received by certain over-achieving juniors and precocious sophomores, not to mention first-semester seniors who entered with the graduating class; and I would probably have objected to it a year ago. But nobody ever said veritas was pretty.

First-years, arriving bright-eyed and bushy-tailed a week before everyone else arrives to campus in September, are clueless. They do not know what Harvard expects of them, how they will define themselves here, or what adventures, successes and stumbles lie ahead. But what is so refreshing about these new arrivals (and about having been one) is that they have the right to be bewildered, and they know it. So the first year is somewhat of a roller-coaster ride, in which everything you see and do is new; you try to soak up your surroundings and gain some much-needed foundation--through friends, extracurriculars and, if you're lucky, a suitable concentration--and Harvard slowly starts to feel familiar.

The drive back to campus in the fall of sophomore year doesn't exactly feel new, but it is significantly different from your arrival the previous year. It's exciting. You're living in a house, and if everything finished smoothly the year before you've got some blockmates, concentration (that you'll probably change) and most important, a feeling of having returned somewhere where people know you. After sophomores settle down, they begin to feel that they know what's going on. They are no longer confined to the Yard or the Grille for their social lives, and by the end of the year, already countless sections into college, sophomores tend to think they are on the verge of understanding the workings of the University--how to beat class lotteries, what "advising" means, etc.--and they realize, frighteningly enough, that they are half way done with college.

On the ascending scale of knowledge, juniors are in some sense the most complex case. The reason is that they do in fact know quite a bit about college in general and Harvard in particular, but still not half as much as they think do. Essentially, juniors feel from the beginning of the year that they know what they're talking about, and that the coming year will just be a matter of getting what they want out of their remaining time here. Where they are correct is that junior year is in some ways the make or break year, the year in which you will either figure out what you're doing here or decide that you will continue to putter through the rest of your college days, and make more of what follows. Either way, a certain arrogance sets in that allows juniors to think they have little left to learn, except what their thesis might teach them.

This is a terrible fallacy, and one which seniors begin to pick up on as they face the fact that adulthood and post-college life lie on their horizon. Senior spring, after theses are handed in and extracurricular commitments have more or less dwindled away, is a time for reflection. It is a time during which we who are soon to graduate can look at the experience we have had, and determine what was important and what was not; which classes and relationships taught us the most; and, on a more general level, it is a time during which we can accurately assess the value of a liberal arts college education--something we cannot do as sophomores or juniors, and certainly not as first-years.

So what is the kernel of knowledge to be gained in the eighth semester? While the specifics of being at the top of the scale of knowledge are different for everyone (and are only meaningful when you realize them for yourself), there is one, I think, that applies to everyone: Spending four years in pursuit of knowledge is enough to teach you that at college's end, you have even more to learn than when you started. Daniel M. Suleiman '99 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.