Of Space Cadets and Safety Nets

Getting sent to the Ad Board is a twisted mark of pride. You are a badass, perhaps an abuser of substances, possibly academically dishonest, and definitely not your typical Harvard nerd. Unless you’re me, that is, in which case the Ad Board officially admonishes you for failing to actually enroll in half of your classes for the spring semester.

I would like to think that my failings were the result of being compromised or sabotaged. For an entire quarter’s worth of classes, I failed to realize that I was following the schedule of an imaginary study card—attending French unofficially and “skipping” my ex-concentration’s tutorial. In truth, my troubles stemmed from an inability to keep my wits about me when faced with the my.harvard.edu web portal, which—let’s be serious—is pretty pathetic for a child of the digital age.

While French never made it to my study card, I also withdrew from Social Studies 10 instead of dividing it with credit, grandly capping off four months of Durkheim and Tocqueville with a failing grade on my transcript. Perhaps I was distracted by the mire of bureaucracy that switching concentrations entailed. Nonetheless, I take full responsibility for my incompetence. What baffles me, however, is the fact that my advising “parachute” never opened above me.

Harvard’s system, which requires a hard copy of each student’s study card to be signed by a litany of advisers, is inconvenient for students. Yet we put up with it because having to get signatures ensures that the professors, department heads, and advisers are aware of our plans for the semester.

My case, which could be just one of dozens, is surely proof of the inadequacy of Harvard’s advising system. My study card was signed by all of the individuals entrusted with advising. None of them batted an eyelash when they signed a study card that enrolled me in three classes and dropped me out of a tutorial with no credit. Ultimately, the responsibility falls on my shoulders, but it left me wondering why Harvard goes to the trouble of installing an expensive—and hole-riddled—safety net for space cadets like myself.

Luckily, both my French teacher and House Allston Burr resident dean saved me from a GPA kamikaze. I am grateful to both of them for their help. I remain, however, mystified as to the purpose of Harvard’s army of advisers when the lack of adequate training and magnitude of students entrusted to each individual forces them to sign dozens of study cards without taking a second look.

Those who choose to switch concentrations are in a particularly tricky situation: Having lost my concentration adviser, I was left in a between-department vacuum. With the delay of concentration choice to the middle of sophomore year, Harvard should take the opportunity to seriously rethink its approach to advising—and hopefully steer its cumbersome bureaucracy towards catching the errors that really matter.

The admonishment from the Ad Board for my “inattention to administrative details” perhaps stung a little. This superfluous reprimand was, regardless, on target. I will never make such a brainless mistake again. But I have no reason to think this will be the last time an oblivious student like me slips through the Harvard bureaucracy—I just hope the advising system is there to catch her.

Emma M. Lind ’09, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is a history and literature concentrator in Winthrop House.