Annenberg Nostalgia

It’s only the first month of sophomore year, and already I’m missing Annenberg. It isn’t the imposing architecture, though nice, nor the elegant statues, which are impressive. The swai-laden menus and barely functional water machines certainly don’t trigger memories of halcyon days. Surely it isn’t a culinary quality that—despite identical ingredients and menus—never fails to glorify the Houses by contrast. No, instead it is what Annenberg represents: one of the few truly uniting—and unexpectedly critical—parts of the freshman experience.

I should be clear: I’ve won the lottery with Leverett. River views from a brilliantly lit dining hall are hard to beat, especially when located in a McKinlock Hall clearly still basking in its post-renewal glow. Yet from my admittedly spoiled perch along the river, I’m strangely beginning to feel a certain nostalgia for freshman year’s overcooked and underwhelming big-box style cuisine.

One of the paradoxes of Harvard is that after admitting 1,600 amazingly talented high school seniors with myriad backgrounds, passions, and personalities, much of freshman year is spent compartmentalizing. The landmarks—move-in day, study card day, and housing day—all celebrate our fragmentation into dorms, courses, comps, houses, and concentrations, successively limiting our interactions to a shrinking portion of the College.

In some ways, of course, this is beneficial. Sixteen-hundred is a daunting number. To spend our four years swimming in a sea of vaguely familiar faces would be bewildering. Yet given the tendency of freshmen to coagulate around similar academic interests or popular activities, in practice Harvard is never as horizon-broadening and transformative as it is in theory.

The magic of Annenberg is that it is a counterweight. The first month-and-a-half of school is a time when Annenberg conversations make it possible to meet a truly random cross-section of the freshman class. The mathematician meets the artist; the musician, the athlete; the journalist, the scientist; and the computer whiz, the poet. Though name-concentration-dorm introductions (or complaints about the food) are hackneyed, a half-dozen of my friendships attest to the power these conversations hold in forming meaningful bonds.

As sophomore life has gone from a distant prospect to a surreal reality, a part of me worries for the relationships I’ve built from my FOP trip, from my entryway, and yes, from random Annenberg conversations, all sustained through the occasional meal. When I was a freshman, there was something magical about walking through Annenberg’s slightly-too-heavy doors and knowing that nearly every freshman I knew would do the same, probably twice, that day.

Of course, it can be daunting too: I’ve walked the terrifically awkward Annenberg Circle far more times than I’d like to admit—marching up and down the rows of tables, tray in hand, desperately searching for a friendly face while wondering how it could be mathematically possible to see so many and yet know so few. And still, it manages to be exciting and unifying.

I’m worried that as my sophomore peach fuzz matures into the more steady rhythm of upperclassman life, these unifying elements will become increasingly rare. Annenberg and the Yard will become more distant, and so too will the reality of each member of my class coming together a couple times each day. Not every person has walked the halls of Leverett House or written for The Crimson. Like sadly few other places and times—Harvard-Yale, Housing Day, and maybe CS50, if David Malan gets his way—Annenberg truly is a common denominator.

The Admissions Office brochures say that the House system enables Harvard to create a small liberal arts feel within the context of a large research university. They’re not wrong. Yet something is still distressing about the fact that the Quad is seen as Harvard’s Bermuda Triangle, a place where freshman-entrywaymates-turned-quadlings go to simply disappear. It is distressing that vanishing into the bowels of the Crimson, the IOP, or PBHA isn’t too uncommon. And why is it that the only time the entire class comes together after freshman year is at the Baccaulaureate Service—two days before commencement? Shouldn’t Harvard be more uniting than that?

The problem isn’t with the Quad, or with the dining halls, or with any other specific place. It certainly isn’t with hard work or extracurricular involvement. It’s a broader problem with the lack of unifying social spaces to accompany the Houses’ smaller communities.

The irony of Annenberg is that what makes it special to me is what makes it frustrating to most. It is the big-box, big-tent side of Harvard that is on one hand inclusive and on the other impersonal. As a newly inaugurated sophomore, though, Annenberg is beginning to acquire a special place in my heart, if perhaps not my stomach.

Derek K. Choi '18, a Crimson editorial executive, lives in Leverett House.