On Harvard Time

One of the first things about which we learn in our earliest days at Harvard is a concept called “Harvard Time.”  Some of us learned about Harvard Time when we attended our first class and found ourselves unable to comprehend why our distinguished professor displayed no irritation when students casually strolled in to class five, six and seven minutes late.

We quickly learned that “Harvard Time” is the idea that classes begin seven minutes later than specified to allow for transit between classes that meet back-to-back.  Somehow, Harvard Time has come to apply to all student activities, from a cappella concerts to intramural soccer.  This fixture of student life unconsciously becomes ingrained in our daily routine.  However, in my four years at Harvard, I have considered other understandings of Harvard Time, beyond the being-seven-minutes-late-to-everything variety.

As a History concentrator, time is something I routinely ponder.  Historical study examines changes over time and the effect of time on memory.  In my sophomore year, I took a course called “The History of Harvard.”  While I expected it to be full of Harvard trivia, this course profoundly challenged me to reevaluate what I thought I knew about Harvard.  I began to consider Harvard, not in a vacuum filled with historical fast facts about Founding Fathers and football but, rather, in a way that bridges its founding origins as a school that enlightened students through humility and faith to its modern image as the standard for extraordinary achievement.

Harvard Time has come to mean much more to me than its colloquial definition.  Sometimes I think of Harvard Time as Harvard’s 376-year lifetime, over which our university has witnessed remarkable paradigm shifts.  For example, Harvard is older than both modern Russia as reformed by Peter the Great and the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.  Harvard Time also extends further back in history than Newton’s Laws of Motion.  Of course, this is not to say that the date of Harvard’s founding should be marked in history like the shift from “Before Christ” to “Anno Domini,” but it is fascinating to think that Harvard graduates, not entirely unlike ourselves, once left Harvard Yard to perform their lives’ work in a world that had not yet accepted heliocentricity.

We can also understand Harvard Time as a special period of four years in the timeline of our own lives, which we spend within this place of seeming enchantment.  Time simultaneously slows down and accelerates.  We lament that four years flew right by, but when we realize how much we have grown, it is almost inconceivable that so many wonderful things could have happened in just four years.  In our own personal Harvard Time, we crossed paths with our heroes.  In conversations with friends, we began to develop into our future selves.  For this phase of life called Harvard Time, the world is open to those brave enough to seek inspiration and opportunity.

What is special about attending Harvard in our own time and graduating in 2013?  In our own Harvard Time, we enjoyed the rare event of a snow day.  We celebrated 375 years of Harvard Time with fanfare.  During our time here, Harvard has promoted future entrepreneurship and education with the iLab and EdX.  Global events occurring beyond Harvard have greatly influenced discourse and activity on campus. In our Harvard Time, Apple invented the first iPad.  SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden.  The Arab Spring left the Middle East in upheaval.  Harvard was occupied.  The Boston community came together in the aftermath of the tragic Marathon bombing.  In every age, we face challenges—wars, economic disasters, epidemics, revolutions—and at the end of their own Harvard Time, past graduates we admire went forth to better themselves and the world.  For Harvard students graduating in the present, this responsibility remains very much the same.

Over the course of Harvard Time, our university, once a humble outpost of enlightenment, has become the universal symbol of success and achievement.  But what makes this moment in Harvard Time different from past eras is that the moral value of aspiration and achievement is being questioned.  It is no secret that Harvard students are driven by the prospect of achievement, but what we in the class of 2013 face as perhaps our greatest challenge is demonstrating that the desire to succeed is not something for which we should apologize.  Rather, the message we must share with those around us is that the value of aspiration is inherently positive, while, at the same time, proving that our desire for excellence is not simply the manifestation of raw hubris.  Harvard students must show the rest of the world that achievement is a force for good, as long as we seek achievement within the doctrine of humility.  While looking to the future, we must learn from Harvard Time of the past and remember that humility was a tenant upon which Harvard was founded so many years ago.  The desire to succeed must always be rooted in humility, and that is what I have come to understand at this moment in Harvard Time.

Catherine G. Katz ’13, a former Quincy House Committee chair, is a History concentrator in Quincy House.