Organization Men

Back home during Thanksgiving break, I was continually tormented with a feverish desire. At the dinner table, in the restroom, upstairs in my room with the door shut, often with the aid of my cell phone—I couldn’t resist. I had to check my e-mail.

This is not my cross to bear alone, however. E-mail fixation is a Harvard-wide fetish. If you have never felt a similar gnawing concern about what might be occupying your inbox or grimaced as you opened Gmail after a computer-less weekend, you are probably one of those academic superstars who are too busy to be reading this column. What are all these vital communications? Most of the nine hundred messages in my inbox are not addressed to me specifically. Their subject lines begin with brackets, indicating that they come from one of the dozen or so organizations to which I, as a Harvard student, am duty-bound to devote my spare time. Some of them are from my classes. Still others are from Facebook. At most one—Widener Library, informing me that my copy of “There’s Not a Bathing Suit in Russia” is overdue—was actually intended for me, and I accidentally deleted it.

So what is it about Harvard and e-mails? The brackets at the beginning of most messages hold the clue. Will Rogers once observed that “We can’t all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” Harvard students have yet to realize this. Our solution to the need for someone to clap as we go by is not fewer heroes but more parades. This is why, on any given weekend, Harvard students receive invitations to three “Parties for Microfinance,” one intimate violin concert, and two innovative re-imaginings of Greek tragedy featuring spray-paint and live garden spiders. Also, the Pan-Australian Dance Collective wants us to come to their Jamboree vs. Malaria. Harvard boasts nearly 400 organizations—somewhat above the Ivy League average: Yale has 249; Princeton “more than 200.” And all of these groups, I am willing to bet, have their own robust, bracketed e-mail lists. Big fish from small-to-moderate-sized ponds are now all swimming around together and founding After-School programs right and left.

Academic prowess aside, Harvard admissions parlance divides students into “well-rounded”—those “who have contributed in many different ways to their schools and communities” and “well-lopsided”—those with “demonstrated excellence in one particular endeavor.” Yet it is the rare Harvard student who is truly well-lopsided. Whenever someone inadvertently reveals to me that he is the world’s premier concert saxophonist, I brace myself for the inevitable “and.” Sure enough, he also tutors abused poodles in ASL twice a week. Braced by years as Student Body President and Literary Magazine Editor and Volleyball Team Captain, Harvard students fling themselves exuberantly into scores of extracurricular pursuits. Even someone who used to be only an Olympic Gymnast frequently arrives and decides she should try her hand at leading sustainability fieldtrips for urban teenagers. Seldom does a student define herself by one organization alone. Appended to every Facebook profile is an elaborate series of acronyms that, put together, suggest that this really is somebody: HIR, HPT, IOP, PBHA. You may not be UC President. But who else is the Business Secretary of Women and Youth Supporting Each Other and the Vice President of the Harvard Romanian Association and the only coloratura soprano in the Harvard Krokodiloes? Each additional acronym carves out a niche in which you can predominate. And with each acronym comes another bracketed e-mail list.

True Love Revolution—yet another of Harvard’s cornucopia of organizations—periodically hosts forums for those who feel unfulfilled. But who has time to feel unfulfilled anymore? You can’t be the founder and president of the Harvard Throat-Singing To Youth In Hospitals Group (HTSTYIHG) and feel unfulfilled, or if you do, you should try e-mailing the list more often. Indeed, Harvard students’ fetish for extracurricular commitment of the e-mail variety may be linked to their distaste for the kind of extracurricular commitment TLR has in mind. Whenever I hear friends contemplating relationships, I ask, “What about the time commitment?” They nod in understanding. Most Harvard students would rather found and edit a journal for celibate mountaineers than be in a committed relationship. You can’t put a relationship on your resume; at any rate, it will look silly if you do. Besides, if a significant other e-mailed me as often as Eliot House does, I would think he had serious emotional issues.

I would conclude that Harvard students need to stop fixating on their niches of excellence and add “Not Taking Myself So Seriously” to their list of activities, but I have to go check my e-mail now.



Alexandra A. Petri ’10 lives in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.