Just Look Up: A New Semester’s Resolution

With the start of a new year comes New Year’s resolutions — you know, those promises we make to ourselves on the first day of every year that we always intend to keep but never actually do. So, with a brand new semester underway, I’ve made a resolution that I do in fact plan to uphold: to stop walking to class so quickly and look up every once in a while.

Last semester, I scheduled my walks to class down to the very last second. I knew exactly what time I had to leave my room to get to class on time. I practiced getting the 12-minute walk from my dorm to the Science Center down to eight minutes. I saw no flaws in my logic — after all, I was simply being more efficient, maximizing my productivity and minimizing time spent wandering around campus.

And, yet, while I did in fact get to class on time (for the most part), I failed at something perhaps even more important: being present.

For as long as I can remember, college has been a dream of mine. It was this faraway fantasy I spent every day working towards. I was eager to head off to college — a place that would allow me to explore economics, government, and social theory in my academic life and music, journalism, and public service in my extracurricular life – and carve my own path.

But, once I got here? Well, more often than not, I spent my days constantly in a rush: running from one meeting to the next, recalculating the most optimal travel routes, too busy looking down at the time on my phone screen to look up and take in the fact that the dream I once romanticized had turned into my now very rushed reality.

In our own ways, we are all rushing somewhere — especially at Harvard. With our student body being an aggregation of overachievers, it’s been far too easy to normalize and glorify “grind culture.” We have to be doing something at all times, every second of every day. And if your Google Calendar isn’t booked and busy on a random Thursday afternoon, or if you don’t spend every single minute of your precious time drowning in productivity, you convince yourself that you’re falling behind your peers, that you should be ashamed.

Harvard has a serious problem with work — and overwork — culture. But the largest problem of all? There just isn’t enough time to do it all.

With such busy schedules and such little time, the last thing we all care about is the travel time that takes us from one thing to the next. When recapping our days, we typically don’t rave about the thrilling 15-minute walk we took between classes. That time often gets lost. Goes from a fleeting moment to a forgotten memory.

But just because we’re always looking towards the shiny new future doesn’t mean we should be speeding through our present.

At the end of this semester, I’ll be halfway done with my time as an undergraduate. And with days flying by almost as fast as I can walk to class, I’ve realized that I should probably be more appreciative of this time while I still have it. That I should stop getting so caught up in my destination and, instead, step back and take a moment to appreciate the daily path I take to get there. From the bitter sting of the harsh Boston winds hitting my cheeks to the sweet aroma that wafts in the air around Tatte, it’s these little things about my environment — these familiar scents, feelings, and sounds — that make my daily path to class so special. And it’s more than time that I savor these moments before they are no longer a part of my present but my past.

So, this semester, I want to do things differently. I want to slow down my daily walks to class and take a look around. I want to become more appreciative of the things, people, and places that surround me. I want to savor this place that I have called home for a year and will continue to call home for the next two years. I want to start taking notice of the little things that life has to offer. The ones that often go unnoticed when we don’t stop to take a look around us.

Nicole B. Alexander ’24, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Kirkland House.

This piece is a part of a focus on Black authors and experiences for Black History Month.