Finding Friends Among Strangers

Yesterday I received my Senior Gift donation stub in the mail. Scribbled across the paper was a handwritten thank-you note from one of the coordinators, a classmate I've never met. Usually, heartfelt sentiments from strangers strike me as phony or bizarre, but I found the note touching. Although we don't know one another, this senior and I share something unique: a Harvard education. On those grounds, the familiarity of a handwritten note is transformed from presumptuous to warm and friendly.

In three months, I will graduate and move to New York City, a place known for the brusque, get ahead mindset of its inhabitants. I expect to feel at home there; I rarely smile at strangers on the street, don't make conversation in elevators and dislike chatty wait staff.

In short, I don't expect to make friends in odd places, like the local bar or the cross town bus. I'm planning to meet people who share some sort of common interest with me: colleagues at work, other members of the synagogue I join, people I meet through other friends.

I also anticipate meeting new people at Harvard Club events. Every year, the Harvard Club of Maryland sponsors a winter luncheon for members and current students. In a room full of strangers, conversations spontaneously combust into being. This past December, I sat next to a Business School alum and his wife. We talked about his old job (captaining an oil tanker), his new job (real estate development), his wife's job (sales) and my future job (journalism). We discussed the state of the real estate market in Baltimore; they gave me strategies for apartment-hunting in New York.

A friend who declined to give to the Senior Gift this year told me that although she adored her college friends and felt they were the most positive part of her undergraduate experience, she didn't think Harvard itself had much to do with her ability to develop strong friendships.

Indeed, several seniors I know have voice this sentiment: Harvard may bring together the most interesting people in the world between the ages of 18 and 23, but it's just an amazing coincidence. According to this theory, Harvard apparently plays no role either in the selection of students or in their decision to come here, an admissions yield higher than any other university in the country.

So basically, what these seniors are saying is that on a sunny day in early September 1995, the planets mysteriously moved into a magical alignment, and approximately 1,600 teenagers suddenly descended on Cambridge.

Now, I'm not an expert in astronomical phenomena. I'm a history concentrator. So I tend to look at the Harvard experience from a historical perspective. While I was here, I made the closest friends I will likely ever heave. Generations of Harvard students have graduated with similarly close friendships, and it's not an accident.

The reason we all have such great friends, the reason I sometimes think my life is a bit like the movies, is because Harvard is the best university in the country. Certainly, Harvard has its problems, some of which are quite serious. But on balance, the Harvard experience deserves at least 99 percent of its renown. We were all lured here by the Harvard reputation, which turned out--at least in my personal experience--to be underrated.

A Harvard education, in addition to its other well-known advantages, affords students the opportunity to meet another 1,599 of the most interesting people their age. Upon graduation, they join a network of hundreds of thousands of alumni, also among the most interesting people in the world. Viewed solely in terms of potential friendships, then, Harvard has to be one of the most valuable experiences in a person's life.

I volunteer for the Senior Gift because I think other students should have the opportunities I have had here. I have no illusions that my small donation will go particularly far toward increasing student financial aid. What my donation represents, however, is my positive feelings about Harvard and the people I have met here. And although I'm generally more cynical than most, I value friends--both those I already know and those I haven't yet met.

Chana R. Schoenberger '99, a former Crimson executive, is a Senior Gift volunteer in Adams House.