Harvard, My Feet, and the Fear

September: I met my roommate twice the day I came to Harvard. He came in, shook my hand, and rushed out about half an hour after I arrived. He worked on the dorm crew, and he had been here a week-he'd also grabbed the single bedroom, the best desk, etc.

Two hours later, he came back in and introduced himself again. "You must be one of my roommates. My name's Pitman. I met the other guy a couple of hours ago. He looks a lot like you, actually."

"I'm the same guy."

"Oh. Sorry." He retired to his room.

Down the hall, a group of guys were talking to some girls from Lesley who climbed up the fire escape and asked if they could come in. One of them asked me if I wanted to join the discussion, I sat for a while and listened. I found I didn't have much to say, so I went back to my room and lay on my bed and read Lolita. My mother made the bed before she left, telling me to keep it neat. I knew when she said that that I would not make it again until parents' weekend.

That night, some of the guys on the floor came into our room. One of them was from South Carolina, and I was delighted to meet someone from close to home. He and his roommate, who went to school in England, drank a case of beer that night.

"What are you going to major in?" I asked him.

"Oh, probably something in humanities," he said. "Or social science. Or something."

I had spent part of the day walking around the Yard, looking at the storied buildings. Every landmark seemed to leap at me out of history and distinction. Widener Library!!! The largest college library-bar none, folks-in the world. Emerson-great balls of fire, that's Ralph Waldo himself-Hall. Harvard Square-why that's one of the greatest crossroads of the world. I was overwhelmed, exalted by just being in this fabled spot.

Talking to the others, though, I saw at once that it would be very bad form to express this delight. In conversation one simply assumes one's worthiness of the place, and considers Harvard fortunate to have him for four years before he becomes famous. The storied towers one views with an appreciative but cool regard, perhaps a little disappointed that Harvard is not just a few hundred years older, its tradition of success a few centuries stronger.

The others convinced me completely. In my mind, there was just no question that any of them belongs at Harvard, that the Admission Department would have regretted everlastingly turning them down. Dan, the guy from South Carolina, was the only one who seemed as confused at being here as I did. He applied to Duke, University of South Carolina, and-at the insistence of an ambitious brother-Harvard. The subsequent course of events seemed a little absurd to him. He had no idea what he wanted to do. He went out to buy some more beer.

I, however, knew exactly what I wanted to do. I came to Harvard to become a famous poet-a decision based on a poll of great American poets which showed that they overwhelmingly favored Harvard. The week classes began, I set out to accomplish this aim with a minimum of delay.

Freshman year, I calculated, was just a little too early to demand admission to Robert Lowell's seminar. There was no sense being greedy. I tracked down a teacher who taught another verse writing class, showed him some poems, and was admitted to the limited enrollment seminar. None of this business of submitting a sample and waiting with the other plebs for a list to be posted. I was convinced that I had Harvard in the palm of my hand: here was my token, my badge, to be displayed when the talk turned-as it did, always-to success.

Hugging this to me, I went to a Wellesley mixer. I had shunned the Freshman mixer, staying in my room and making an $8.50 call to my girlfriend at home. She went to a community college and was wondrously impressed with me and my intellectuality at Harvard. I accepted her deference, casually, as a matter of course-which seemed a little strange even at the time, because I knew that she was much smarter than I.

I went to Wellesley expecting this kind of deference again, and, in a way, found it. I talked to a girl, told her that I hated the mixer, and was delighted to find that she also hated mixers. Having found something in common, we sat on the ground for two hours and talked. She was from Cairo.