Slow Down
Reading Time: 5 minutes
“Slow down you crazy child, you’re so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart, tell me why are you still so afraid?”- Billy Joel, Vienna
A week back into college, and it already feels like a month has passed. I spent winter break back home in Sydney where I was lucky enough to spend time with family and friends, not to mention some quality time fishing with them. I’m now entering my second semester at Harvard and I find that I’m really succumbing to the classic paradox of choice when deciding my four (or more) classes for the next few months. What may seem to some as a rather trivial decision is more or less a pretty significant strategic decision for me each year or so.
Given that I have this incredible opportunity to commit months into diving deep into an academic field of interest, I always feel as if I have to think quite carefully about how to spend my time. Even if a class is, hypothetically, marginally ‘better’ than another class, choosing that class could give way to a profound difference in experience over four months, especially when that decision compounds. I think the classes you choose can also have an impact on the rest of the college experience, as it determines the distribution of your time in college because a heavier load generally means less time for clubs, socializing, winding down and genuine personal connection.
So, I believe that spending an extended period of time contemplating one’s values is justified when considered from an expected value standpoint. As a result I end up having ‘crises’ at the start of each semester where Harvard has a ‘shopping’ period, for us to freely add and drop courses from our schedule, which are mostly just episodes of me overthinking my schedule and poring over the course catalogue and QGuides (past student reports). I end up going into the semester with a strong sense of a plan, and then a few days in I realise that my values or identity has changed since making said plan, and as a result need to do some serious thinking into how I want to make the most of the opportunities that this fabulous institution has to offer. This semester I was going to continue dedicating 20-30 hours a week into pure, abstract math in Math 55b (Real and Complex Analysis), but then realised that compared to the time that I would be investing over the next months, the util of the class didn’t justify said investment. Instead, I’m just taking a real analysis class which will be much lighter (alongside a Wittgenstein class, a Dante class, Expos, and a Gened).
Even before I came to Harvard, I came across this incredible article “Slow Down” by Harry R. Lewis, former Dean of Harvard College. Albeit slightly old (dated Jan 9 ‘04), I think it’s one of the best reads I’ve had about finding direction in college. Naturally, Harvard is full of overachievers who took the most demanding courseload + extracurricular activities possible, because that’s what they were told would assist them in gaining admission to Harvard College. But now that we’re here, it’s so easy to forget our privilege and continue to maxx out opportunities - what some call ‘freshman overconfidence syndrome’, and likely what I regard to be a variant of impostor syndrome. Everyone here is highly impressive, so in order to compete socially, which we naturally tend to do as human beings, we take on an extraordinary number of commitments, and we oft seek status as a motivator. There are so many amazing opportunities and choices that you can’t even wrap your head around what the most ‘optimal’ choice is. Because FOMO will do its job and push you to go beyond, and on, and on. Interestingly, I’ve also noticed an interesting phenomenon within myself and many of my friends at Harvard - we only ‘have time’ for two things: classes and clubs. If you don’t spend your time doing this, perhaps you’re ‘wasting’ your time. I don’t know if this is a universal experience, but I guess as students there’s almost this social pressure to be doing ‘stuff’.
So, Lewis preaches for us to slow down - he argues that spending less time in a range of preprofessional extracurricular activities might not yield as much as spending unstructured time with friends and doing what we deeply enjoy. Lewis says that “The human relationships you form in unstructured time with your roommates and friends may have a stronger influence on your later life than the content of some of the courses you are taking.” I think I’m gonna try to be more social this semester - last semester was comprised mostly of late nights working on problem sets with friends, and I made some great memories then. I’m certain that Harvard has more to offer. The alarming thing was, that in the process of dropping Math 55, I realised that if I dropped, I wouldn’t be too sure how to spend my time, which caused a friend to say that if it were the case that I had nothing else to do, it would mean that I was seriously one-dimensional, which he knew I was not.
Though now retired, I had the privilege of meeting Professor Lewis over lunch last semester in Harvard’s SEC, where we had a great conversation, and he recommended one of his “Morning Prayers” from Sep 2006 titled Educational Requirements, which I strongly recommend (it’s literally less than a 5 min read, please do). I interpreted this article as a set of guidelines to make the most out of the liberal arts curriculum, which was one of the greatest reasons for hopping on a couple of flights 11,000 miles from home to come here. In essence, Lewis’ guidelines include 1) taking a course in which you have no chance of getting even a ‘B’, 2) taking a course which has no right answer, and my personal favourite, 3) take a course which ‘makes you profoundly uncomfortable, troubled, sleepless, and disturbed… because your beliefs have been challenged by what you have been made to read.’ Lewis’ requirements are intended to build ‘wisdom, not knowledge’. I also ended up reading his book, Excellence Without a Soul (which is also freely available on HOLLIS) on the flight back to Boston after winter break in anticipation of the semester starting again. Definitely worth a read.
Lewis also took the liberty to send me a document explaining baseball to international students. He also wrote a book about how baseball can be connected to various aspects of life. I’ll have to read it some day.
Fast forward a few weeks from when I wrote the majority of this article, and here I am. My workload, despite being 5 classes, is significantly less than what I had last semester. Definitely a big shift to a schedule that has far more unstructured, non-academic time. Perhaps I have this feeling at the start of the semester, because I’m still ‘comping’ (trying to gain admission to) clubs and haven’t had my commitments ramp up yet.
Every time I think about classes, I think about why exactly I wanted to do them. I was going to do a Math, Latin, Dante, GenEd, and mandatory writing class, but found myself wondering if locking myself into a particular academic program like Math/Classics by knocking out requirements is the most optimal play. A few days later, I dropped my Latin class and picked up a philosophy class two minutes before the deadline. Fuck it. Chase what excites. Perhaps I’ll design my own concentration here.
“Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard
End of the day, no one knows what the fuck they’re doing. Least of all, me.
Yurui
