On Time Off

At any given moment, an infinite range of choices lies before each of us. The palette of all the things we can do next. Some are obvious: check email, text a friend, procrastinate doing that problem set, run to a meeting. These actions are so habitual that they don’t take any energy. We can do them robotically, without thinking.

Then there are the more adventurous choices. Go for a walk in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Strike up a conversation with a stranger in the dining hall. See the glass flowers at the Natural History Museum. (They’re actually cool, I promise). Eat hot pot in Chinatown.

To most of us, or at least to me, doing these kinds of things takes initiative and mental energy. We are busy people. Indulging adventure means putting down the to-do list, clearing time in the schedule, and doing something rather than just thinking about it.

But even these examples don’t come close to true adventure. We are lucky enough to be Harvard students, and the choices before us in any given day balloon beyond comprehension. Want a behind-the-scenes tour of any museum or building or stadium in the world? Have a favorite author or musician or political figure you’re burning to talk to? It’s yours if you want it. Someone at Harvard can help you arrange it, or knows someone who can. You just have to be enthusiastic and persistent.

The question is not, “What do we want from our time at Harvard?” The question should be, “What do we want that we’ve never even thought of?”

Here’s some unsolicited advice: If you have ever dreamed of a project or trip you’ll take on once all life's responsibilities finally fall away, you’ve been thinking about taking a gap year. If you’ve ever dozed off in class and seen yourself on a fjord looking up at the northern lights—that’s your imagination crying out for adventure.

Harvard responsibilities are pressing. “After graduation,” you say. “The summer after next,” you justify. Don’t deceive yourself. You will never hit inbox zero. The best time—the only time—is now.

Work at an emu farm in New Zealand. Teach English in Taipei. Road trip through the Rockies or bike across France. Spend time with your grandparents and ask them questions about their childhoods. Tutor. Volunteer at a homeless shelter. Wait tables or busk on the street, and save every penny you can. Write romantic poems and don’t show them to anyone. Watch “The Wire.” Learn to make guacamole and margaritas, and make them again and again. Pick up the guitar and let the world hear your terrible singing voice. You might surprise yourself.

“Isn’t it hard?” people have asked me repeatedly since I returned this September from my own year off. “Is it tough to leave your friends and come back in a different graduating class?”

My answer: Of course it’s hard. It’s hard to stick out. It’s hard to come back and find your friends changed. Hard is the point. A year or a semester off is a chance to ask all the questions you could never answer honestly because they hit too close to home. What do I like about Harvard? What do I hate about Harvard? Why should I go back?

Question everything. Laugh at your character and your habits. Lose yourself at sea and learn not to be afraid. Unless you go through times when you feel lonely and confused, and countless lazy mornings when nothing seems to matter, you’re doing it wrong. Trust your future self to put the pieces back together.

My gap year was the best year of my life, and the best part of it was coming back to Harvard. Because when I dragged my suitcases into Quincy on move-in day, into a suite full of my old friends, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no place on earth I’d rather be.

Eyck A. Freymann ’17 is a Crimson editorial writer in Quincy House.