Skip to main content

Harvardom


Walking around Cambridge, it is impossible to say where Harvard University begins and ends. The town is full of the redbrick, white framed Georgian buildings that so distinguish Harvard architecture. These dignified walls and buildings line the edges of Harvard square, a tourist hub and central pulse of transportation. They extend outward, down the forked web of avenues to the 9 graduate schools connected to the University- schools of medicine, dentistry, divinity, law, business, design, education, public health, and government. It is unmistakably a center of learning, with a graduate student population double the size of its undergraduate students. I do not mean to rhapsodize the university for its grandeur and prestige, or even to place it at the center of the Cantabrigian universe. In fact, I have not yet developed any particular intimacy, or personal bias for the institution, apart from the fact that I am just entering its divinity program. I am but a stranger in a foreign land.

And yet, here my imagination soars. The trail of brick and elegant door pediments draws me deeper and deeper into the notion that this is, indeed, a little kingdom, which I like to call Harvardom.

In Harvardom, all of the citizens are carrying backpacks or book bags. They are in the business of studying, researching, or just becoming smarter. Most of them are not from here, but have traveled oceans and lands to accent the air with their curious sounding voices. It is a very international scene, this Harvardom. I once ran into a Belgian, British, and Israeli student along a 10-minute stroll to class.

But among this unpredictable diversity, one thing is for certain. Everyone walks with purpose. Whether they are pursuing degrees in sustainable landscape design for mega structures, or combining Chinese acupuncture with Western medicine, or completing their foundational study in Jewish theology before entering rabbinical seminary, all eyes glint with ambition and focus. All are determined to braid their eclectic set of interests into a driven, nothing can hold me down, resolve. Which is not to say that they are robotic or impersonal. It’s just that along these quaint, winding streets, they have found some raison d’être, and those who will push them to become everything they have ever wanted to be. And I wonder how these narrow roads and wrought-iron gateways could ever contain them? Is it not too quaint, too sweet and small to hold such personalities?

I am sure that’s exactly what Mother England thought of her little Puritan colonies. And yet. This little kingdom, of brick and cobble, has birthed an epicenter of learning to which the world now flocks. Oh Harvardom…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another Reflection on Breaking-Up

It’s happening again.   One of my good friends is on the other end of a telephone call, holding back tears as she recounts the details of her recent break-up. She is a strong, fiercely independent woman, who has counseled and coached the rest of us through the emotional train wreck of many collective break-ups.   Two years ago, she told me, “Maggi, when you end a relationship, you find yourself waking up every morning to a dull heart-ache perched upon your chest and you really, really believe your world is over.”   You roll yourself out of bed anyway. You make the route cup of coffee.   You stumble into the shower and let the steam swell around you.   If you’re feeling especially lifeless, you drape your hair over your ears, so that the cascade of hot water makes a deep rushing sound, like being swept beneath the sea to a powerfully calm, fetal state of being, where the roar of running water drowns out all the piercing thoughts in your head.   You...
5 comments
Read more

Listening to the Radio: A New Year's Resolution

If I were to make any resolution for the New Year, and these are seldom, I would listen for the year as I listen to a newly discovered song. Just the other day I was driving along the 5 freeway; on my left, the sun guiding the Pacific, and on my right, Oceanside’s famous stretch of mustard fields. These are just the kinds of drives that lull me into a meditative trance, that dispel the doggedly anxious thoughts from my mind and allow me the simple pleasure of being in the world. There is nothing else to do in the car but drive, and while this made me crazy with boredom as a child, it has since become a favored form of contemplation. Even my radio listening habits must adapt to these long drives. Because I am crossing multiple county lines, my go-to stations become static, and I am forced to explore the uncharted musical airwaves. And because I hold no expectations for what I will discover there, my reception of the unknown changes. I wait with curiosity for a song to unfold. I...
3 comments
Read more

The First Negotiation

The morning light licks the corners of my face, repeatedly, until I consent to opening my eyes. She makes her gradual way across the bed, nudging her most promising sign of hope unto the tossled ivory. The sun is far more gentle than any alarm clock I’ve ever fought, though no less insistent. In such radiant self-giving, how many times can I roll over? So we strike a compromise: I will flip my pillow and “rest” my head, but promise to keep my eyes a flutter, little windows parted slightly for the streams of her still light. Sometimes I up the bargain, telling her that there is really no better way to receive her glory, no greater praise of her warmth, than to surrender consciousness upon her lap, just a little. She will often reply by shedding new light upon the floor, warming a most suggestive path out into the kitchen. My stomach grumbles. Are you sure you don’t want to try freezing time again? I ask. You, me and the sheets, forever curled in our secret morning splendor...
5 comments
Read more