Harvard Degree, Four Years Early

“What,” goes the self-serving joke, “do you call the students who graduate bottom of their Harvard classes?” “Harvard graduates.” The old jokes are, if not the best, than certainly the most comforting. However, even the most cursory glance at the Harvard student body would tip off the casual observer that most undergraduates are unable to grasp that simple premise. In spite of the furor over falling numbers at last week’s Phillips Brooks House Association First-Year Day of Service—where 25 students participated, compared to more than 300 eager volunteers the previous year—the problem at Harvard remains the student body’s over-commitment and unrelenting drive, not its passivity or fecklessness.

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 agrees, having sent a letter urging incoming students to “slow down” for the past two summers in what he acknowledges is a fairly vain attempt to get Harvard students to change their habits of a lifetime. Unfortunately for Lewis, the second law of thermodynamics that everything gets colder (and thus slows down) does not seem to apply at Harvard—undergraduates whiz around, never properly pausing for breath, let alone stopping. He acknowledges as much in an e-mail message, explaining, “I almost wonder if it’s possible to understand the warnings in my letter until one has actually made the mistakes.” Harvard students, so willing to glean any piece of information which might prove useful—or, at least, testable—from an assigned text, would do well to study Lewis’ letter with the same vigor. For the simple, almost trite maxim “less is more” contains more practical wisdom for the Harvard student than can be found in any algebraic equation or classical quotation.

It would be convenient to blame the constant rush to achieve—either through gaining higher grades or accumulating superior extracurricular positions to one’s peers—on the atmosphere at Harvard. Yet the sad truth—or, perhaps, the cheery truth—is that pressure here is entirely self-inflicted. It is perfectly possible to coast through, working very little and obtaining what, in pre-gender equality days, used to be called Gentleman’s Cs. Yet, to hear students stress and strain over pointless problem sets and redundant response papers, one would assume that Harvard demanded constant academic brilliance in order to remain within its exclusive ranks. Let’s destroy this canard once and for all: You do not need to work nearly as hard once you’re here as you did to get in. The swollen envelope that came during senior year of high school was an invitation to relax for four plus years en route to Commencement. Moreover, the work you put in during high school, be it in Newton, Nebraska or Namibia, already made you worthy of that Harvard degree, regardless of the hours spent cramming in Cambridge.

That said, Harvard rightly goes out of its way to choose students whom it knows will not waste the wonderful resources at their disposal here. Lewis himself is keen to stress the positive effects of competitiveness, which he says “drives excellence.” But excellence and the need to excel are far from the same thing. Grasping this fundamental dichotomy would rectify any number of problems at Harvard, ranging from rampant grade inflation to the stagnant social scene.

The consequences of many students’ solipsistic desire to use college as nothing more than four years of resume building en route to Harvard Medical School or Goldman Sachs are more dire than might be immediately apparent. By refusing to allow themselves to let up, students are both failing to receive the maximum value from their education and may be imperilling their well-being. Provost Steven E. Hyman, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, said that from a young age simply putting pressure on oneself to have a strong application for Harvard often “destroyed the joys of just being an adolescent.” Moreover, he worried that this self-imposed competitiveness often “carries over into undergraduate life with excessive levels of stress and interferes with the ability of [Harvard students] to explore interests and enjoy their college experiences.”

Administrators seem to have identified an important problem within the Harvardian psyche. After busting a gut to get here, students are clueless about how to relax and enjoy the fruits of their successes. How to rectify it, though, is another challenge altogether. Lewis’ extremely small-scale suggestions to that end are limited to not creating “more yardsticks”—such as having grade point averages calculated to three decimal places. Yet, by so doing, he rightly acknowledges that decisions about priorities while at college can only be made by individual students and suggests that all he can ever do is “affect behavior at the edges.” Which, sadly, will be far from enough to rectify the problem.

The quest for excellence and the compulsive need to excel are entirely different. Perhaps the ability of the less compulsively driven students to understand this is why the old adage holds true: After a few years here, regardless of the number of mornings spent postering, afternoons spent harmonising or evenings spent reviewing, we’ll all be Harvard graduates. And worthy ones at that.

Anthony S.A. Freinberg ’04 is a history concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.