What Was It All About?

So this is it. The Big Day. Well, actually tomorrow is the Big Day, but since today is Class Day--a celebration of the kleos of our class--we can dispense with the semantic details and consider this the Big Day.

By now we have taken care of most of the graduation-season logistics: burning books, laughing at underclass students and issuing stock market shares in our souls to loan officers. What remains, however, is the big question: Just what was our Harvard experience all about? For the purpose of argument, ignore the water torture and Grade Z beef-like substance we have been forced to endure.

Also ignore the obvious answer that our Harvard experience has been about loans.

Also put aside the crazy notion that "Harvard" does not really exist as a school, but in fact is a live-art museum exhibit for tourists.

Have you got those clear out of your mind? Good.

Our Harvard experience has been about our greatness. I have a strong belief in the inherently higher value of our class over other Harvard classes, past and future. That is to say, we are smarter, cooler and generally better people. That is to say, our class can kick your class's butt.

I realized in high school our class was special, and when searching for the source of similarities in my college experience, it occurred to me that we're the same people! Part of what makes us so special is that we have weathered many a change either as firsts or lasts.

One example.

During our first year, we made the dining hall transition from the Old Union to Annenberg, also known as "that funny-smelling place of largeness and darkness with ceilings too high for butter."

But the change was not merely one of location. With Annenberg came an entirely new style of food distribution: "The Scatter System." Remember that joke?

In the days of the Union, there were lines--orderly, simple lines from one meal item to the next. In the Scatter System, though, lines were considered too simple for the advanced mind of the Harvard student. Chaos theory was invoked as the orderly lines were discarded in favor of an every-nerd-for-nerdself replacement.

Drinks would be on the outside; salad in the middle, bread in the ceiling tiles, fruit in Lowell Lecture Hall, dessert in Loker and the main entree somewhere between the fourth and seventh dimensions.

Fortunately, we only lost a few dozen classmates in the melee. We survived. But scattered food has not been the only theme of our time here.

Most important, of course, has been the learning. We have spent the past four years accumulating a wealth of knowledge about something. Some of us are not quite sure what that something is since we've spent the last week in an attempt to wash it away with drink and/or contact sports.

All right. So we've narrowed it down. Our Harvard experience has been about scattered food and learning something.

Maybe this is unclear. I'll try a metaphor.

An underclass student asked me for some advice the day before he left to write a Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller. Clearly, he did not read the surgeon general's warning permanently branded to my head that reads: "Listening to this guy is extraordinarily dumb. He's a little nuts."

But the young lad insisted, and I gave him these words, slightly edited, with which I will end this exposition.

Harvard is a castle. Really. It's big. Old. Made of stone. And has a large swamp thing-infested moat surrounding it. There are towers (Mather/Leverett) and dungeons (Ad Board) and a lot of old things lying about (professors).

Our goal upon entry is to make it to the other side of the castle, like a video game. Early on we are aware of the main hall. It represents the tried and true, quick method of making it. But what happens in most cases is that people check out side rooms where they have some experiences, meet others and maybe even "learn" something. There are oracles and guides placed throughout to help us to the other side.

Some of them are very helpful. Others tell us to browse through the career binders. These would be the bad advisors.

Soon we discover tunnels that connect the rooms, and thus our experiences, to one another, and we depend less on the main hall.

Then we get more ambitious. "Let's build a room of our own," we say. And the more literary among us hold a rally insisting that it have a view.

Next we connect our created rooms with new tunnels we've dug ourselves. We bypass the main hall altogether. In time, each of us has taken our own unique path through the castle, contributing a part of ourselves to its structure.

We have changed and so has the castle. We are at the end, and we see that this castle exists within an even larger castle. Our hope should be to move through this new castle with the same boldness and creativity as we have done here. Let's build rooms and tunnels of our own. Maybe even build our own castles.

If there's one crazy thing I've ever written that you should remember, it is to question everyone and challenge everything (except your parents, who made this whole gig possible--thanks mom).

It's been a great four years. Thanks to everyone, and for those who owe me money, the interest rates only go up between now and the fifth reunion. Baratunde R. Thurston '99, a philosophy concentrator in Lowell House, was chair of online technology at The Crimson in 1998. He can be reached forever at baratunde@baratunde.com.