Pass the Punch

“There is nothing in this country that I haven’t been able to accomplish with the right amount of man-flirting,” one of my international friends half-jokingly said to me. I laughed and nodded my head in agreement. It was punch season and we had been talking about final clubs, echoing the type of conversation much of the campus has during this time. As we weighed in on the true implications of the punch process, the conversation took an interesting turn.

“Do you realize we’re going to be doing this our entire lives?” I said, “Grad school interviews, job interviews—they’re all punch processes in their own right.”

“God, I hope not,” my friend replied.

The truth is, Harvard students, no matter what your opinion on or experience with final clubs, you’re more familiar with them than you think. From that big shot professor’s office hours to that consulting group recruitment dinner, we are all “punching,” i.e. trying to gain acceptance or an “in,” for one elite social group or another.

Leaving out controversy over the day-to-day practices of final clubs, the principles they stand for are those that govern much of our human nature. We are drawn to people we perceive as friendly and confident. We have our long-standing groups of friends—networks that aren’t impenetrable but are difficult to become a part of due to the longstanding relationships. Final clubs are an institutionalized version of Harvard’s natural social scene.

Love it or leave it, social exclusiveness is not an original concept and not an entity you can remove from any college campus. Living in America, we are fortunate enough to be part of an imperfect meritocracy. However, it’s naïve to think that our meritocracy doesn’t include social intelligence and personal connections alongside academic accomplishments and perseverance. The knowledge you earn in your four years at Harvard will be less valuable if you’re unable to find the right person or the right opportunity to use it. This concept doesn’t just apply to the social circles of a select few; it applies to any field of study at Harvard. Want to work at that cutting-edge physics lab? You’re going to have to convince the professor running the lab first.

Admittedly, final clubs are less discrete about the purpose of their punch process than that professor or Teach For America recruiter. No one from an academic or professional institution is going to tell you that their reason for an interview is to see if they like you. But after you’ve paraphrased your personal statement and discussed your extracurriculars, doesn’t it still come down to that? Whoever is sitting across the table is going to form their opinion of you based on your confidence and your poise—in short, how interesting and likeable a person you can be.

In a strange way, the socially competitive aspect of Harvard helps prepare us for future careers and opportunities. It has been said that there’s no worse judgment than that of your peers. In that case, interviewing for med school should be a breeze compared to punching the Porcellian Club. Grabbing lunch with your internship supervisor—nothing compared to that coffee date with your Sabliére match.

This is not to downplay the differences between the selection processes. Graduate schools, jobs, and internships base the larger part of their selection process on the academic and extracurricular accomplishments that their applicants have accumulated over a lifetime. Final clubs base their selection largely on the personalities their applicants display during a handful of events. The pressure of punching does not equate to the pressure of applying to graduate school. Nevertheless, both processes of advancement require a certain amount of social savvy on the part of aspiring members.

Final clubs may be the purest embodiment of the concept that social intelligence is often a means to an end, but they’re not the only one. In our future endeavors, we will be judged not just on the accomplishments listed on our resumes but on the strength of our personalities and character. Its not a truth we like to accept, but it’s a truth we stand to lose a great deal by if we deny.

Natalia Nedzhvetskaya ’13, a Crimson editorial comper, lives in Quincy H