Most people who come to mind as likely attendees of a graduation or commencement ceremony fall into one of three categories. The first category: graduating students. The second: friends and family of graduating students. The third: faculty of the school holding the ceremony. I am not most people. Last week, I wrote about how I was still on campus working with Harvard’s Dorm Crew because I needed the money. After helping clean suites to prepare them for various reunions for a week, I helped with various tasks for Harvard’s Class Day and Commencement morning and afternoon exercises. This meant, among other things, that I was able to watch all of Harvard’s Commencement.
Attending Harvard’s commencement was, pomp and circumstance aside, different than all the times I have attended graduation ceremonies. Sitting by one of the water stations (it was my job to refill them with five-gallon water jugs whenever they became empty), I felt a sense of pride I didn’t feel at my own graduations or those of my older brother—he didn’t attend his college graduation last year, and the only thing I understood about his high school graduation when it happened 11 years ago was that it likely meant he would be leaving us for college. This time, there was the same realization that my graduating friends and I would (temporarily) going our separate ways; but there was a realization of a different kind as well.
To me, it often feels like there is both an internal and external expectation that students at Harvard excel. By that, I mean there is pressure to do as well at Harvard as students did in high school to be admitted to Harvard. That can be daunting, especially because everyone at Harvard is just as brilliant as you are. Only so many students can graduate magna or summa cum laude, be inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, be admitted into top-tier graduate programs, or earn Fulbright or Rhodes Scholarships. These things can seem far off and unlikely—that is, until you see your friends attain them. When that happens, suddenly those far-off accolades no longer feel so distant.
I do not mean to suggest that my graduating friends are not brilliant; far from it, in fact. But because I’ve spent time with them and around them, they also seem normal—brilliant, yes; but normal. Because they seem normal—inasmuch as a Harvard student can seem normal—they have made the unusual seem normal as well. When you see one of your friends approach the stage when the president of Harvard University asks students who have been awarded summa cum laude to draw near as she ceremonially grants graduates of Harvard College their baccalaureates, you feel an overwhelming sense of pride. And, if you’re like me, you begin to aspire to the same level of brilliance and genius your friend has demonstrated. The same happens when you see friends inducted into Phi Beta Kappa; admitted to Harvard, Duke, and Cambridge, among others, for various graduate programs; and awarded Fulbrights and other prizes and scholarships.
After my struggles first semester—“struggles” relative to the standards of a Harvard student, especially because an A- is apparently the average grade—I found it difficult to imagine myself reaching such heights. Granted, only five percent of Harvard students are awarded summa cum laude, and only ten percent are inducted into Phi Beta Kappa; but it is difficult to survive in a place like Harvard without believing you are inferior to no one. As such, I somewhat paradoxically thought there was no reason why I couldn’t and shouldn’t do well enough to earn these accolades. My early setbacks were crushing in that regard; but talking with my graduating friends about their struggles and successes made the possibility of rising above them seem more real. Indeed, after seeing the example they set for me, how could I not aspire to the same success?
Graduations are often bittersweet. They are at once a time for celebration and a time for flashbacks and farewells. So although it is saddening having to come to terms with the fact that my friends in the Class of 2016, some of whom I look to as older brothers and sisters, will be absent when I return to Harvard for my sophomore year in three months, I smile when I think of their accomplishments and the memories I have with them. And I thank them—for showing me that I can do all the things they did.
