The only
things I can remember from the last week, outside of finals, are end-of-year
celebrations. ROTC had their change of command ceremony a little while back,
with speeches and refreshments and new drug-and-alcohol forms for all of us to
sign. The main speaker was the father of my squad leader for the past semester.
He’s also a former SEAL and a current NASA astronaut. It was pretty neat.
My a
cappella group also had a Christmas Party, complete with a Secret Santa
exchange. It was an interesting party – more like a business meeting with
presents and snacks, really. We all had fun for a while exchanging presents and
hanging out, and then we talked about tour (we’re planning on heading to Taiwan
for Spring Break), song suggestions for next semester, and a few elections.
Some of the officers cycle through every calendar year, and some every school
year, so that someone always knows what’s going on.
The
elections were interesting for two reasons. First, they aren’t really,
technically speaking, elections. If you sign up to run, you will either be in
the position or co-hold the position. This is probably helped by the fact that
not many people are overly anxious to run – we all have many other things to do
– and consequently, only two people wanted to run for the two positions open
for this coming semester. Which is a long explanation of how I ended up as
Treasurer/Secretary as a freshmen.
Harvard also has its own Christmas activities.
I’m attaching pictures of the gingerbread-house decorating competition. It was
a nice evening, together with all the participating freshmen in Annenberg with
gingerbread and icing and all sorts of candy for the taking. At the time,
though, I was still a little sick, so I grabbed a few sweets and some hot
chocolate and headed back to my room. There was also a Christmas caroling
service last night, but I missed that due to all the confusion about
yesterday’s finals.
Yesterday
was crazy not so much because of the bomb scare, but because of the rerouting
that said scare necessitated. I was in Sever when they first started
evacuating; we had just started our finals. What is the first thing that
Harvard students – or most college students – do when the alarm goes off during
a final exam?
That’s
right. Nothing. We glanced up, slightly annoyed at the noise (we were trying to
concentrate, after all), and then went back into the ‘zone’ and tried to keep
working. For the record, there was a fire alarm in my dorm earlier in the year,
and we did exactly the same thing. The real problem without an organized
evacuation plan doesn’t seem to be people panicking – it’s people continuing
life as usual.
In any
case, it wasn’t until they told us we had to leave that we finally surrendered
up our finals to the proctors and walked outside. The first hint that it was
something serious was the police officers – not the Harvard Police, but the
Police Police. Then it started getting more confusing. They told us to get away
from the building, to go somewhere and wait, because it would be a while.
People unfortunate enough to leave phones or coats in the buildings couldn’t go
back in, and when the proctor started to send us to the Science Center, they
informed us we couldn’t go there, either. After a few minutes of speculation,
we deduced bomb scare.
I didn’t
see anyone besides maybe the police officers who looked particularly worried
about the bombs. We were much more worried about the finals. Contrary to
popular belief, Harvard professors do not simply hand out A’s, or even passing
grades. Averages aren’t so great going into reading period, and we needed those
finals.
We sat in
Panera’s for two hours, having discovered that we were locked out of the yard,
and tried to figure out what was going on. Most people don’t bring that much to
a final, but some people had laptops, and almost everyone had a phone, and for
a while both stories of Panera were filled with Harvard students tracking the
news, the Crimson Twitter feed, and an assortment of group texts to try to
figure out what was going on. The students didn’t know; the proctors didn’t
know. The administration was trying to figure it out.
I’m sure
the cancelled finals, and the closing of several buildings used for afternoon
finals, was an administrative nightmare. We all understood. But we had flights
home which depended on our finishing exams on schedule, we couldn’t study
properly without access to the materials in our dorms, and it wasn’t really
helpful when Harvard sent out two or three emails an hour-and-a-half after the
fact to tell us we’d been evacuated. Well, I’m sure it was news to somebody.
After a
couple of hours watching the gates and contacting my parents, ROTC, and
concerned friends to let them know I was fine, the gates were reopened and I
was able to get back to my dorm. It was strange – the yard was empty except for
a few police officers who let me pass after asking where I was going. I did
make it to my afternoon final, and after a lot of discussion with a lot of
people who were just as confused as I was, my calculus professor was nice
enough to let me personally come to the newly reopened Science Center to take
the exam I had missed that morning. And thus I am sitting on a plane now
instead of finishing the make-up exam, which was rescheduled for today. The
legacy of yesterday’s bomb scare amounts to nothing more than a lot of texts
and missing the Christmas caroling service.
The finals
themselves, despite being nearly derailed, were about as expected in content.
I’m not sure how I did yet, but none of them caught me unprepared. My answers
to some questions may not have been stellar, but I had a reasonable answer to
all of them – there were none of those moments where you just stare blankly at
the page and wonder what’s happening. That’s always a good thing, right?
Maybe it’s because of the stalled
and then quickly rebooted adrenalin of testing that I still can’t relax and go
into break mode. I’m not sure why, but I’m still tense when I think about those
exams. Well, it’s over. I’ve already finished one-eighth of my time at Harvard.
Now I’ve left the snow of Boston behind me, and I’m sitting here with a Tom
Clancy novel on my Kindle half-watching 300 playing on the screen next
to me and trying to think philosophical thoughts.
I don’t
think we ever feel the full import of the watershed moments in our lives. Some
moments may be enormously impactful, but almost everything in live is a
conglomeration, a compilation, of many, many moments. A final exam counts for a
high percentage of the grade, but it is meant to measure the comprehensive
course load – the sum carryover of each reading, each lecture, each section
combined. Life is much the same – there are weightier moments, but they are
given weight by the sum of the circumstances they are built upon.
I guess
that’s my long way of saying that I don’t really feel that different from
myself four months ago, that I don’t feel like I’ve grown older or more
independent. I don’t feel anything particularly special, other than lingering
tension from finals and the anticipation of heading home. I’m sure I have grown
in some ways – things that used to worry me don’t bother me as much; I can do
more things on my own initiative with my own judgment. But this particular
moment doesn’t strike me as a milestone – my first semester of college.
That said,
this does seem the appropriate time to make a few remarks about the first
semester of college. So, overall impression? I like it. It’s different than
high school, for sure. Mainly, the difference is initiative. You learn what you
want to learn; you participate if you want to participate. There are always
incentives for doing more, but it’s not required to go the extra mile, or even
to make the trek in the first place. If you like to walk, though, it’s a much
more scenic route.
Enough with
the extended metaphors, already. But college is what you make of it – much like
life. And Harvard is great. The people are considerate, the community is interesting,
the classes are fantastic, and the weather isn’t that bad, discounting
February. The only complaint you can have about the activities is that there
are too many – you can never have time to do everything you want. The same
could be said of the class offerings. Overall, I am glad I came here. I would
recommend it except that, well, it’s Harvard, and I don’t really need to. But
rest assured, this is not a place where people do nothing but sit and study –
even on finals week.
I’m also
happy with my choice of extra-curriculars. I’m not burned out, as I’ve heard so
many stories of, and I have a solid foundation to work with if I want to add
other things in the future. My a cappella group is made of a great group of
people, and I’ve also formed good relationships through ROTC. I’ve had a great
time with the Christian fellowships and at the church I attend here, and I look
forward to returning to them next semester.
But for now
I’m headed home to sleep late, read for pleasure and have Christmas. I wish you
all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and I hope you get to spend
the holidays with you families, wherever that may be. Thank you for reading my
blog this semester, and I look forward to writing for you again in the coming
year. Until then, best wishes!
Sincerely,
Lauren
Post Scriptum - Thank you to my dad for the picture of me coming off the escalator at the airport. Also, with everything else going on I'd forgotten about my ROTC class's VIP tour of the USS Constitution. It was really interesting, and we had a great time! I will now move on to swamping you with pictures!
No comments:
Post a Comment