So here it is: you're at Harvard, and it's nothing at all like what you thought. All the superficial things you expected are there, plenty of tweed jackets and pipes, enormous libraries, distinguished professors, but none of it seems to make sense. It's out of control, everyone rushing around madly doing important work, telling you to get with it and come on over and join the fun, and it's just too ridiculous, even though you'll wish it weren't. And you'll be all alone ... Harvard really means it about leaving you to your own devices. All you'll have is the friends you make and the books you read. Maybe a little more sex than before, but not very much of it will make you happy or fulfilled. Freshman girls will have to live up at crummy Radcliffe, freshman boys in the crummy Yard dorms.

At first, you won't be able to say why the University seems so ridiculous and distant and how it can be that it seems to speak of a different world than the one that you know. You won't even be able to say how the University seems irrelevant to your world, because the University will in effect deny your world's existence.

The Dean of Students will admit that some of your ?? are valid, or the University psychiatrist might say your condition is typical-and therefore benign. But none will really understand when you say the world has gone completely off its rocker, and that you see a big "Tilt" sign in the sky sometimes. To admit your world's coherence would destroy their own.

Perhaps this is pessimistic enough to hint at why the Freshman Class tends to smoke more dope and drop more pills than any other. See yourself sitting on the floor of your lonely dorm with a big water pipe full of dope, and all the lights out, your big candle burning on the floor, the Dead or somebody else playing on your little stereo, and you just taking away until it's all a big buzz, and maybe going for a walk later. And, oh boy, one of the first things you realize is that there's no difference between "weekdays" and "weekends" any more. Nobody goes to classes or does any work, and (wait and see) neither will you.

There are some problems with this way of looking at a University education, through rose-colored glasses, or at least big, heavy stoned shades. The first is that if it makes sense to you to get stoned and fuck around, then just about anywhere else in the universe is better for it than Harvard. Any patch of grass off any road in the country is better, for example. Harvard is not bad for the conventional reasons. Nobody ever gets busted here. That's really true. You can leave bricks of dope lying on the floor, you can hang tabs of acid out the window tied together with a bright orange string. You can walk down the street singing a song you made up with the words, "oh wowece, I sure am stoned tonight," and you won't even get stopped.

THE REASON that Cambridge is a lousy place to trip around like that is that nobody ever trips around like that. Nobody ever sings songs that they made up. Instead, they usually sit in their rooms and talk about tripping around, or about why everything's so shifty that they can't just trip around. So one rarely sees alternatives to the Harvard education of reading books and long ponderous discussions and big talk-no action. Instead, one reads books about those alternatives, or has long ponderous discussions about them.

So watch out. Don't let Harvard kill you. Think constantly about when you were younger and didn't care about anything and did whatever you felt like. Harvard will tell you that was undisciplined and immature. In fact, the scent of getting here may already have done you in. So if you're having any second thoughts about whether to wait a while before going to college, stop and think about them some more. Take them seriously. Imagine registration day like this: you turn in a little card that says "my carefree innocence," and it's gone forever and you've got your books and off you ??.

And if you can remember when someone you trusted asked you what do you want more than anything and you answered to be free and strong, than for sure don't come to Cambridge, because Harvard will take away your strength, or make you doubt you have it; and it will put a blindfold on you and spin you around a hundred different ways with a hundred neat little theories and tell you when it's over to go pin the tail on the donkey. They really will do that. They think, in fact, that one of the best things about a Harvard education is that it makes it hard to tell if things are true or not. And other much worse things, but you're probably still going to come and you'll find our for yourself.

No more disparagement. Dope is great, and there's lots of dope at Harvard. Lots of good movie theaters too, and restaurants that stay open all night, and record stores that seem to have every record you've ever heard of or can imagine might exist.

And lots of street freaks to reinforce the general paranoia and the ridiculousness. And a nice-to-look-at but polluted river that you can sit by or play guitar on the banks of or throw an errant frisbee into the middle of. And there are nice walks to take; better than any city except Paris. Sometimes on the prettiest days in the Spring, people will stop rushing around the Square as if no one else existed and actually talk to somebody they don't know and have never officially met. Like a jamboree on a Hollywood set, and you can smile and be a part of it, and light up a big joint and say ain't life grand.

And there's the revolution, and you can come to Cambridge and help understand what it's about, and maybe help make it. You'll probably get kicked out if you do though, because Dean Dunlop says he's optimistic and resolute now that he's gotten rid of the troublemakers, and he's counting on the fine Freshman Class to keep the Crimson team marching on into the future.

At the very least, march at your own speed, and keep your eyes open, because you'll see some incredible things happening.