“How’s life treating you?”
“Oh, well, you know! It’s alright!”
“But you’re at Harvard! Life should be awesome!!!”
I should have smiled more. I should have raised my voice and rambled about the plentiful opportunities and exceptional people here. I should have acted happier.
Harvard University is, after all, the hallowed ground admired by the world for being a pinnacle of knowledge and prestige. It is the school whose Instagram photos have infinite comments exclaiming love for the institution and begging for formulaic guides to getting accepted. It is the school that tourists visit to breathe the privileged air of Harvard Yard. It is the school many call a dream.
To me, it is a colossal privilege to be at Harvard. Having worked as a janitor through high school to help my mother cover personal expenses, an education here is an opportunity to overcome the socioeconomic disparities that gridlock my community below the line of poverty. Here, I have been granted with more money than my family has made in the past four years; I have associated with people I would have never imagined meeting last fall; I have discovered interests I would have found unlikely before coming here.
But that is not all of Harvard.
On sunny days, watching leaves fall from tinted autumn trees as I walk through Tercentenary Theater with prominent Widener Library and stunning Memorial Church on either side of me, I feel Harvard’s truth. I see myself feeling just as I did during that spring weekend for newly accepted students. In line to take photos by Widener Library for celebratory social media posts, everyone is thrilled to be here.
That identical walk takes a dark twist when I am walking back from Lamont Library at the night’s darkest and coldest hours. Rethinking the past week’s choices, too often have I wondered if these walks would be happening as often at other schools. Would I constantly feel behind? Would I constantly feel stressed? Would I constantly feel out of place?
Living in an environment that exemplifies perfection to the rest of world can make us forget we are not meant to be perfect. We, the overachievers who did the unthinkable and got into Harvard along with other universities of comparable prestige, need to periodically allow ourselves to burst through the gates and be vulnerable again. It is okay to be struggling while it seems others are not. It is okay to not be okay. At some point, everyone struggles; everyone has to adapt; and everyone falls apart. Our H-branded identities and ambitious personalities make us no different, and we should not feel pressured to live up to the perfection of our institution.
In fear of being a burden to our effortlessly “perfect” classmates, simple how-are-you’s are neither asked nor answered genuinely as often as they need to be. As we adapt to this new privileged identity, we need to be the person we would most want to see in our quietest walk of night and stop and listen for perfection’s hardships.
