The Brain Dumping

Have you ever noticed the way birthday candles melt? A carnival-colored cascade, dripping bright pinks and yellows, melting too quick for comfort. For Claudia Cabral, that fast melt marked the time to slow down. Not that she had a choice — her 20th birthday fell on the same day she was sent home at the outbreak of the pandemic. It would have been her last birthday at MIT. And it would have been the last one regardless — one semester later, Claudia would be accepted as a transfer student to Harvard.

School had always been immensely important to Claudia. She is the first in her family to graduate from high school — let alone college. It wasn’t until her success at an extremely STEM-focused South Florida high school that she found the courage to apply to an elite college. After discovering her first academic encouragement among pendulums and protractors, she was drawn to more of the same. She came to see that her science and math mind was what would open doors for her, to the point where she convinced herself that she liked science and math. Claudia describes the pressure of being a First-Generation college student as the feeling of being a racehorse with blinders on. It’s a fear-fueled focus. One that screams that if you drop the ball just once, even a little, you could lose everything you’ve worked for. It’s only natural, then, that Claudia took her technical talents and ran with them all the way to one of the top biomedical engineering programs in the country — if not the world.

On the surface, Claudia thrived there, joining many clubs and diving into her classes. But in reality, she joined club after club and tried class after class just to try to find one that she felt genuinely drawn to — to no avail. But it was while trying class after class that Claudia realized what truly captivated her. After cross-registering for an introductory sociology class at Harvard, she was so excited by the non-STEM material that she glowed when she talked about it. When her family visited Boston one weekend of her sophomore year, they noticed her newfound excitement around school. That’s when the thought flashed across her mind: What if Harvard?

By the time the Common App transfer application opened in November, Claudia knew she was going to give it her all. On her long walks to classes, she turned it over and over in her mind. She would take notes constantly, giving ink to any useful thought that struck her, filling up notebook pages with what she affectionately deemed as “brain dumping.” After countless hours spent in front of her essays, she turned in her application in early March, the week before she had to leave campus for the pandemic.

Then, three months into the pandemic, that brain dumping ended up being quite valuable – against the 1 percent admission rate’s odds, Claudia was accepted as a transfer to Harvard. She was overjoyed, even while it would be almost a year before she could set foot on Harvard’s campus. During that time, she realized that it was time to set her course. She drew on support from her family to combat burnout – the burnout unique to years of hard work on something that isn’t the right fit for you. Laughing alongside her siblings over snacks between classes, Claudia learned to lean into what interested her.

She gave herself the space to enjoy the humanities and the social sciences that lit a fire in her mind, even if it wasn’t what she had been encouraged for all her academic life. Her life in the biomedical engineering environment had felt too constricting, too fast, like candles poised to smother a birthday cake in wax. A forced slow-down was just what her motivation needed. Coming from a First-Generation background, Claudia had always felt a few steps behind in internship and research experience. She used this new time to hone new skills that she had never had the chance to work on before. And while she did, she found a creativity and a playfulness that had always lived within her.

Nothing takes more courage than recognizing the dream you’ve worked for your whole life might not be the right fit — and doing something about it. Claudia manifested that courage to try new ways of expressing herself at Harvard, where she’s part of the ballroom dance team and the meditation club. She’s a member of the coveted public speaking class, Expos 40. She studies sociology, different from biomedical engineering but equally human-centric, and thus captivating to Claudia.

She learned the value of being courageous not just in standing up for others, but in standing up for herself when her path was not right. Three semesters away from in-person school, and now a different school altogether, helped Claudia see that college was not forever. That she had achieved her dream of college by any standards. And that now, life was not only about surviving, but about flourishing.

Many thanks to Claudia Cabral ’22 of Lowell House for sharing your story.

— Abby T. Forbes ’22 is a Philosophy concentrator in Adams House. Her column “The Trades” appears on alternate Fridays.