10 Prescott Street

Over the summer, as I transition from Tai Ran Tang into my identity as Tang Tai Ran, the faraway corner of Greenough Dorm that had housed my Harvard first year life feels like a childhood room left behind and never revisited. It is now time to unpack all the dust and give the raw intense experience of being a freshman a proper closure it deserves. Alternatively, this is also everything I have learnt in the year before I am finally legal to buy alcohol in the US.

I have forgotten the room number, but I remember the scratches on the wooden floor.

It has been less than half a year but my dorm room number has escaped me. Maybe I am just someone terrible with numbers, because I can clearly remember the dents and scratches on the hardwood floor caused by our rocking chairs or the ghosts of someone shifting the furniture. I can remember how to open each stubborn screeching window. How the grey tiles of the toilet floor are always clogged with hair. How I had inhaled the strong scent of weed drifting into that toilet from somewhere downstairs and I had felt intruded upon. Looking back, freshman year felt like always forgetting something important (like your room number) but always remembering some vivid detail.

So that brings me to the first lesson: this vagueness in how I feel about freshman year stems from not setting proper goals for myself. The school year in the US passes by much faster than you think and I went into the year without a proper goal I believed in. Sure, I sat down with my advisors, and seniors, and friends, and outlined what I wanted. It was not for a lack of trying. The bigger issue is simply not knowing enough to set goals I truly cared for. How much do I care for my grades now that I am out of the machine that is the Singapore academic grind train? How many “new things” should I try in the midst of trying to survive in a new place?

There are no tips and tricks to get over this general apprehension as a freshman. Thus, upon reflection I realised that the only goal any freshman could meaningfully set is to try a broad range of experiences. There were many disparate events I had dipped my toes in simply because I could not come up with a “why not”. Being a horror actor in a budget scream house, starting a map of cool places to eat and hang out around Cambridge (which I gave up within months), taking a class on astronomy, going to every single thrift shop in my area, taking the photo of that one tree through the seasons, the random list goes on. I want to say that it is normal to feel like some things I’ve tried are very superficial, and does not contribute to me leading a meaningful life. However, it is the sheer breadth of things I have tried which enables me later to set more specific goals.

Now that my own self-diagnosis is done, I want to reflect on the specifics of how I had spent my freshman year.

Nobody comes to Harvard to study

There are two types of students at Harvard and this is a Venn diagram with zero overlap – those who came to Harvard to study in this world class institute, and those who studied to get into this world class institute. My negative experience with the latter group of retired students is what shaped my response when most people ask “how is Harvard?” I usually reply that it’s really nothing special, and perhaps surprisingly enough this is a place with the greatest congregation of people with the worst work ethics I have ever seen. It had been a huge sticking point for me how attendance was factored into our grades here to incentivise people to show up (talk about doing the bare minimum!)

I think I surprise even myself with how harsh and lacklustre my response is after my freshman here. That is my fault – I think I chose to focus too much on the people who skipped classes or did not take their education seriously. It is time to hang out more with people who did in fact come to Harvard to study. I’m not being fair to the people who are really talented and bright and worked hard to get here. For sure there is a sizeable population of people who get on my nerve for coming into Harvard with bad attitude and baggages of privilege, but I want to be able to learn from this university experience in my remaining years here, and there is no learning value in only focusing on the worst.

If it has not been clear enough already, I think I fall squarely into the type of student who takes classes seriously, and I am grateful I did that because some of the courses I have taken have really shaped me to be a better person. If there is one advice I can give to anyone planning to come to the US to milk the liberal arts education, it is to put in effort in the classes that have completely no relevance to what you are majoring in. These General Education classes feel frivolous, or are treated as free passes to get an easy A. And it will be that way if that is the attitude going into it. But I have been rewarded tremendously for the effort, and I really want more people to be able to share that feeling.

I enjoyed the intellectual landscape and what I have studied especially in my Spring semester because of the classes that are beyond the scope of political science (ironically, the one political philosophy class I took happened to be my least favourite). My oil painting class – don’t even get me started – is amazing and it taught me about the technique of oils and being an artist. More importantly, it taught me about being unafraid to pass judgement on whether art, and by extension the argument it represents, has its merits. My astronomy class is taught by such a wholesome 93-year-old professor and it made me rethink how I have been learning science. It rekindled a kind of curiosity for the universe, and it helps a humanities person to step out of the narcissistic chambers of the human condition, and turn our gaze on the things much bigger (and smaller) than us. I cannot rave enough about this class about Power I have taken in the Law School because it exposed me to the kind of philosophy and logical rigour of dealing with many complexities in today’s world – I kept thinking that this should be the model our GP classes back home should be conducted!

If my nerdy rant has not proven a point, I truly believe that the liberal arts education in the US is intellectually rewarding by providing such diversity and ignites such curiosity for the world around us. As someone who had, up till I was 19, did not consider the US for higher education, this is one of the happiest accidents that happened in my life. Nerdish/elitist of me, but the learning here has been a good experience.

Sound travels up, so the sound of parties and people reach my fourth-floor window every night

Now, beyond the liberal arts education that nurtures intellectual appetite, the other half to any application essays to the US is sure to namedrop the learning that is done through engaging the diverse community around us. Harvard has the whole spectrum of diverse, and that I at once both appreciate and despise. Some of my worst experiences in my first year stem from one end of diverse that offends me with its incompetence (harmless) and unscrupulousness (actually harmful). With so many of the students here having a fist around America’s pulse, potentially becoming future powerful men and women, I think I need to close my eyes sometime to stop myself from becoming too jaded. To be charitable, I will chalk up some of the behaviour to immaturity. Some of my best experiences in my first year have also been from the great diversity I have encountered here. Good food I have never tried before, interesting life experiences, nuggets of wisdom, and learning to challenge my own world view. Everything you write about in your fantastical conjecture in your application essay is true.

Learning pointer: struggling with diversity is necessary. It is actually more difficult to learn from our diverse peers than I realised, because being different creates friction with my own core values. I had to confront myself for being overly harsh on some people/events. For example, regards for punctuality is a big difference that affects friendships. For example, the freedom and liberty brand in America conflicts with my values of respecting seniors and teachers.

Another thing I am starting to appreciate about my time in college is learning to be ok alone. I would like to, however, distance myself from the lone wolf mentality and being a shitty team player vibe that account for my unflattering assessment of some Harvard students. Being comfortable with being alone is not being lonely, or being self-centered. That might be a surprising conclusion, seeing how college is often marketed as a highly social learning experience. There are many things that will never happen if I am counting on dragging another person along with me. Kendo and Ballroom, two of my favourite extracurriculars, happened despite people who signed up with me dropping out of the commitment. Most of my outside of campus exploration trips are solo journeys because it fits my timetable and I don’t have to wait for anybody. I thoroughly enjoyed my solo trip to Philadelphia because I did not have to worry about conversation and could look everywhere, notice sights and sounds, and hum happy songs to myself while watching an unexpectedly beautiful sunset. Being comfortable alone also encapsulates the judgement I had to learn to withstand when I have most of my meals alone. In a Harry Potter esque banquet hall, it is intimidating to have people stare at you eating alone – some people have even approached me to sit and talk out of pity. To me, mealtimes are alone time, for me to catch up on work, for me to restore my social battery, and I learnt to be comfortable enforcing things for myself regardless of the judgment from outsiders.

Looking back on my social experience in freshman year, I think it definitely falls short of the kinds of bond I was expecting to make in school, based on my secondary and JC experience. Which is unsurprising, given the disparate class schedules, and the much shorter face time I get with schoolmates (which is only 8 months in a school year). The college experience rewards people who lead intense and extroverted lives, and might disadvantage people like me who take really long to get to know people. I think the biggest learning point from this is to identify my friendships, and cultivate the meaningful ones at my own pace. In order for college to be rewarding, it has to be done on my own terms.

There is also a nagging doubt at the back of my mind: whether I was being slower to open up and less worried about the social life because I had no real pressure to make lasting bonds here. During summer, I realised how little my Harvard life had to do with my life here in Singapore working in the military. There is no one to call up and tap into the lucrative connections, and maybe the only real times I get to meet my friends after graduation are if they travel to Singapore sometime for a little holiday. There is an exotic, summer-fling quality to the relationships I am making. However, I have learnt that friendships are not measured on their future worth. This is also a lesson I am learning from my current relationship: don’t treat people as a means towards something in the future, enjoy the here and now and the genuine human connection forged in the present. The prestige of a Harvard education can often tempt people into viewing relationships as the network they provide in the future. However, I cannot just love or befriend someone because I am counting for them to stay useful in my life after Harvard.

Sophomore

I started off reflecting about my non-goal setting. So maybe now I will set new goals that I want to achieve for my second year, having grown much wiser and bolder from my freshman year.

1. Go on a Harvard overseas trip, be it for a forum or for fun. Revenge spend the ridiculous price of my education.
2. On the topic of travelling, gather my courage and get my damn driving license no matter how difficult the RMV authorities are. Preferably before winter, because I Am not driving on ice.
3. Go hike a nearby mountain. I have signed up for their mailing lists and have not gone for a single trip.
4. Visit all the jazz bars in Boston, now that I am finally of legal age. Time to get cultured.
5. Stop spending my money on clothes. No more than one shopping per semester.
6. Gather my courage and compliment someone for their outfit – because I have been only receiving and not giving at all.
7. Decorate my room like I am living in it, and not just treat it like a hotel.
8. Stay in touch with the friends I have made in freshman year.

Fun goals aside, here are my more serious goals:

1. Go for office hours and build rapport with the professors. I swear I am not doing that enough because I am terrified.
2. Sit down in my new class and proactively talk to new people. I have been spoiled by the Singapore education system that automatically makes our classmates our friends. No more taking that for granted. Go make some allies, or at least practice the social proactiveness that I lacked. Maybe I can psycho myself into an extrovert.
3. Be responsible and lead a good team for both Ballroom and Kendo.
4. Keep up with my good work in academics and sleeping enough.