Waiting to Exhale

By now, Harvard class of 2010, you’ve had almost a week in the Yard under your belts. Your placement tests are done, the Annenberg line is shrinking as you realize the dining hall is already serving leftovers, and your “Periodic Table of Mixology” poster already needs more poster gum. You’re riding high; the world (or at least Harvard Yard) is your oyster. Luckily, you have us to burst your bubble. Welcome to the real Harvard.

First, you were likely ignorant and did not peruse the Crimson archives before you got to Harvard, meaning you’re still wearing that stupid lanyard. Convenient? Perhaps, but it makes you look like a blogger at a comic book convention. The good news is that you can always take off the lanyard. The bad news is that if you’re still wearing it as you read this, it’s already too late.

But don’t fear. You can always restore your cool factor through Harvard’s raging party scene. (Playboy once rated Harvard the number three party school…in Cambridge). Freshman girls, this will be easy for you. Travel in groups and have the hot ones closer to the door (ladies, you know who you are). Freshmen guys, you will have to develop a bloodhound’s ability to sniff out alcohol. But don’t travel in a herd, for God’s sake. And guys, if you hear of a party in something called the Fox or Porcellian don’t even bother. Girls: Same rules as before, but sluttier. Remember ladies, this is the semester to go to the Delphic, hook up with a senior guy, and then join the Radcliffe Union of Students and spend your remaining time at Harvard hating on final clubs.

After a night of hard partying (i.e. sweating, awkwardly bumping up against each other, and drinking warm Busch beer, a.k.a. horse piss with bubbles), you’ll want to satisfy your late night munchies. At this point, you may still be reeling from what you naively think are the myriad possibilities of late night dining in the Square. In fact, there are two poor pizza parlors and an adequate burrito place. Blame this on Cambridge’s town government, a politburo of curmudgeonly residents, who, though they live miles away from Felipe’s, still manage to hear noise from the restaurant.

Of course, once mid-semester comes, you’ll have no time to go out. Upperclassmen will obviously still be partying, as they understand that “required reading” is always only “suggested reading.” Yet you freshmen, with your over-achieving habits still intact, will find yourself nibbling on a pre-wrapped muffin and sucking down coffee at 4 a.m. at a café in Lamont Library, while you bemoan the fact that Harvard actually requires (some) mental exertion and print out a transfer app to Yale.

Finally, some of you may have already begun to think about classes. Likely, you’ll want some help, so here’s some advice on advising: It doesn’t exist here. Your proctor will be unable to tell you if there are any decent Cores, and sectioning is tantamount to taking the SAT and undergoing a frontal lobotomy at the same time. No one can help you with this. Peer advising is a new program created to lubricate the process, but at the end of the day, you’re still getting screwed. Hopefully, you’ll get a hot peer advisor to make things tolerable, but then again, this is Harvard, so don’t count on it.

Freshman Week is an unrealistic glimpse of Harvard life, so the next few weeks might be an unwelcome splash of frigid rain on your frosh parade. But pretty soon, your debilitating awkwardness will start to ebb, and Harvard will start to feel like home—an odd, at times overly geeky and hypercompetitive home, but a home nevertheless.