The Learning Curve

By 9:56 a.m. on May 1st, 2001, I was sure I’d made a mistake. Earlier that morning, on my way to school, I had dropped my college acceptance card in the mailbox after an agonizing month of weighing decisions. Did I prefer the Bay State to the Garden state? Was I better suited to the Kremlin on the Charles to the Ivy Country Club? Did I look better in crimson, or orange? Trusting the advice of various friends, teachers, and parents of friends—my own sat on opposite sides of the fence—I signed up to join the 369th graduating class at Harvard. But as I sat in my AP English class, I seriously contemplated racing home to pull the card out of the mailbox and retract my decision.

As word of my choice spread, I was comforted by the collective opinion that I was right. Months passed by and I met more of my future classmates and learned more about the world I was going to enter. With its unmatched coterie of professors and the soaring achievements of its undergraduates, Harvard was the offer I couldn’t refuse and I began less grudgingly to prepare for Freshman move-in.

On September 1st, my classmates and I went off to college. We arrived with packed suitcases, high expectations, and low alcohol tolerances. More importantly, we arrived with a belief in our own invincibility, we were 1600 big fish armed with equal parts optimism and naiveté. Having rarely been confronted with failure, we were united by the belief that these four years would be, if not the best years of our lives, at least excellent preparation for the glorious future promised by graduation speakers around the globe.

Harvard prides itself on the range of opportunities it presents its undergraduates, with its 41 concentrations, 41 intercollegiate varsity sports, and over 300 extracurriculars ranging from the Lovers of the Garden State to the Hong Kong Society, the Krokodiloes to the Kuumba Singers. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of self-discovery and enrichment, and no two among us have had exactly the same meal. What we have shared instead is the discovery that you can be anything that you can imagine. That is--you can be anything, but you cannot be everything. Perhaps you can play for HRO and the Water Polo team, be marshal of Phi Beta Kappa and consul of Sigma Chi, as well as love the Garden State. But even the most conscientious overachiever is hard-pressed to do it all at the same exacting level of type-A perfectionism for which we Harvard students are notorious.

Rather than become too familiar with that still-hated idea of failure, we learn to make choices. Some are easy ones—chickwich or chicken parmigiana; study, or procrastinate. For me, however, even these supposedly simple ones have sometimes been tricky. Each choice in one direction is an opportunity foregone in another. As an only child and (former?) overachiever, the idea that you can’t have it all, or do it all, remains repugnant, no matter how realistic. Yet I can only survive so long without sleep, so sometimes in the juggling act, despite my best efforts, grades, clubs, teams, or friends have gotten dropped.

As an economics concentrator, I’ve been taught repeatedly that the best indicator of future events is the past. We have no other way to tell the future, and we cannot know if the choices we are making will turn out for the best. We have each made our share of mistakes, and there are many out there who can attest to mine. There are the courses and the tequila shots I shouldn’t have taken, the darks and whites I should have separated, the office hours I should have attended, the papers I should have started a few days earlier, and the arguments I should have conceded. There are the times I should have held my tongue, and the times when I should have been honest. Rather than look at my Harvard career as the sum of my mistakes, I can only pray that I have emerged a bit wiser, perhaps a bit less dignified, but certainly fortified with greater knowledge of my abilities and limitations. And to those who have witnessed these tumultuous years, I offer my thanks, my apologies, and my hopes that you too have learned from my failings.

After all, it is not only through our own victories and defeats that we learn. I came to Harvard not for the millions of books in the library collection or the exquisite cuisine of HUDS, but for the people I wanted to meet. And my friendships and loves, rivalries and enmities have taught me a least a modicum of understanding and accountability through the successes and failings of others in our lives. I have learned to operate in a delicately balanced world, as a leader and follower, teacher and student, coxswain and crew, and I think that lesson has been shared by many others in the Class of 2005. We are no longer be the same 1600 uncompromising big fish who arrived here September 1st, 2001, but now, accompanied by a few of life’s bruises and scrapes, we are better prepared to create for ourselves the future we deserve.

Ashley B.T. Ma ’05 is an economics concentrator in Leverett House. She was business manager of The Crimson in 2004.