Dear member of the Class of 2009,
Welcome to Harvard! I am writing both to introduce myself and to give you some advice to consider as you begin to think about your first year in the College and beyond. I have been Dean of Harvard College for the past two years, but my advice is informed by my own experiences as a graduate of the College and by the fact that I have been teaching and advising Harvard students for twenty years.
In the beautiful cadences of the first sentence of The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow writes:
"I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."
Being an American, even an American born in Chicago, offers no particular advantage nowadays, but being a student who is not afraid to knock is absolutely essential if you are to get the most out of your courses, your activities outside of the classroom, and Harvard itself. If you want to get into a seminar, go see the instructor and make your case. If you have a question about - or disagree with - something that is said in a lecture, go and discuss it with the professor during office hours. If you want to sing, or act, or write, take the initiative to pursue these opportunities. In high school, many choices may have been made for you; at Harvard, you must make them yourself.
Of course, the bewildering array of choices here can be almost paralyzing. How to select four courses for the fall term from among the thousands that are listed in the catalog? How to choose which orchestra or a capella group to work with, or which public service organization to volunteer with? Fortunately, you don't need to make these choices yet, and you'll have plenty of information and advice when you do confront them. An entire week of freshman orientation will help you get started. And you'll be able to sample a wide array of courses during the first week of each term before deciding which ones you will take.
My predecessor as Dean, Harry Lewis, wrote an essay entitled "Slow Down," which you can read on the College website. Much of his advice about choosing your academic program and taking care of yourself is simply common sense, but the exhortation to slow down can run against the grain of what you may have learned in high school. There, one is counseled to take the most advanced courses, to participate in the greatest number of extracurricular activities, and generally to run oneself ragged. At Harvard, I hope you will learn to pace yourself. Take one or two very challenging courses each term, not four (I can assure you that an honors math class at Harvard is unlike anything you have seen in high school). Be a full contributor to one extracurricular activity, rather than an overly stressed, and not very valuable, participant in several.
In closing, let me say that I think that Bellow's Augie March would have been well prepared to get the most out of Harvard; I hope you will be, too. You have already achieved so much, and have a wonderful opportunity before you. I hope to meet many of you this year, at the monthly breakfasts that I host in University Hall.
