CAN I ASK YOU a personal question?"

The woman from downstairs dragged me into her room, shut the door, looked around nervously, and then whispered, "How many times do you need to masturbate a day?"

That was the highlight of Freshman Week in Stoughton Hall. It was not entirely unheralded: I had had premonitions of disaster when I climbed up the four very long flights to my cavernous one-room double and stared at my roommate with the calculator looped around her belt. I had worried about the place when I met the guy downstairs who bleached his hair ash blond and posted death poetry, embellished by skull and crossbones, on his door. I got nervous when I heard the strains of opera punctuated by very loud and horrifyingly off-key singing in the room next door. But I knew I was in serious trouble when I heard that question.

I had arrived late, hoping to avoid the first-night exchange of SAT scores. But it didn't take me long to realize that I was going to hate living in Stoughton anyway. The spring before, I had carefully filled out Harvard's rooming form; after three years at boarding school I had a good idea of what I wanted--and didn't want--in a roommate. Three minutes of conversation with Ellen convinced me that some joker in the housing office had read my thorough, if slightly arrogant, application and gleefully selected someone with every trait I detested. In our brief, mutually wary encounter, I discovered that she was a chemistry fanatic who went to bed at 10 p.m. and got up at 6 a.m. (I never go to bed before 3 a.m. and I never get up before 10 a.m.), loved Celtic harp music and Gregorian chants, and belonged to the Spartacus Youth League, a group of rhetoric-spouting Trotskyites who have done much to discredit leftist politics. "Chemistry is a communist plot," she grinned. "It's had free radicals for years." Then she turned and cackled to herself--a trait that would persist throughout the year--and I got the hell out of there.

I COULD RUN, but I could not hide. That evening, I staggered into the required meeting with Proctor Chuck, a nervous, wide-eyed moron whose insensitivity and comprehensive ignorance of Harvard perfectly suited him--in the eyes of the Freshman Dean's Office--to guide 30-odd freshmen through the year. Chuck welcomed us in his high, overeager voice and then, with the preface, "I thought you'd like to know something about yourselves," began to read each anonymous person's high school rank and SAT scores from computer printouts. We all stared at each other uncomfortably, trying to figure out who among us had graduated first in a class of 1000 and who had gotten the double 800s.

"I don't know much about Harvard," Chuck continued modestly, and proceeded to lecture us on the pitfalls of elitism and the greatness of his undergrad years at Colby. He then told us he would turn in any pushers, but would tolerate dope-smoking, and shoved us out into the perils of Saturday Night Freshman Week.

Total strangers wandered through the dorm, madly introducing themselves, in search of instant friends. The nauseatingly sweet smell of incense (burned to cover the odor of dope) and the stench of old beer permeated the dorm. Music blared from every corner of the Yard, while huge groups of drunken men huddled and leered at women going from party to party. I got asked the big four questions--name, school, career plans, SAT scores--so often I could recite them in seconds (although I refused, as a matter of principle, to talk scores). After one night of parties, I'd had enough. I didn't want to meet any more people out to prove to me that they deserved to be at Harvard. I didn't want to take tours and gape at the Yard, or watch people such up to professors in forced "discussions." So I boycotted Freshman Week, huddled in my half of the room with my best friend and fellow groupie from prep school, wincing as Ellen talked chemistry with the girl across the hall and paraded around in her orange pajamas and electric blue bathrobe.

I gave up on my roommate immediately (not the nicest move, but I could see the handwriting on the wall), but I did not give up on Harvard as fast. Then I met my dormmates.

I have never met anyone at Harvard able to match my tales of the people who lived in Stoughton my freshman year. Person for person, they were psychos. Zozo and Yarco, Stoughton's hulky Cuban sentinels, pouncing upon each girl as she entered the dorm: "What did you do tonight?" (Avuncular whine) "Who were you with?" (Leer) "Were his roommates there?" (Snicker) "A lady wouldn't do that." (Dismissed); Rob, the awestruck and disoriented Midwestern roommate of the Death Poet, wandering about sadly, latching onto anyone who would listen, occasionally making conversation with the two calculator-addled physics jocks who haunted the stairs and discussed their SAT scores; the tall silent guy we nicknamed Frankenstein, stalking out at dusk, headed for God knew what, and returning at dawn.

Then there were the Campfire Girls--two puerile Jewish American Princesses who dominated the floor in spirit by virtue of their loud, inane squels of girlish fun. They raced around in shorty nightgowns, short-sheeted beds, watched TV, hung out their windows and flirtatiously called down to men, and played cute little pranks like getting some guy to burst into my room at 3 a.m. and jump on my bed while they laughed maniacally outside. Welcome to summer camp. One of them, Lori, was a real space shot; she babbled in a soft, coy voice and wandered about in heavy makeup, glassy eyed. The other, Tamara, was an aggressive, competitive overachiever who raved about her work, her perfect, clean-cut, overachiever boyfriend, and her virginity.

Up on the fourth floor with me were the opera-nut (who also accompanied her music with an out-of-tune recorder) and her clean-cut roommate, along with a hodgepodge of very smart people who stayed behind closed doors studying most of the year. The women also had to cope with Chuck's completely inept attempts at seduction ("Can I borrow your typewriter?"). It was lonely up there, and I hated everyone.

FRESHMAN WEEK BEGAN MY RETREAT from Harvard, my frantic attempts to assuage my loneliness and frustration by clinging to memories of life and friends at boarding school. I know it's a little unfashionable to praise prep school, with all its elitist connotations, but for me it was a haven, an unrelenting series of academic challenges enlivened by warm friendships with students and teachers. I didn't think I had swallowed the social caste propaganda--I am proud of my Syrian Jewish heritage and my immigrant grandparents. I had gone to public schools until tenth grade, and I knew intelligence is not confined to prep schools. I had always hated the socialite, tennis-playing atmosphere of my suburban town, and I fled to prep school as a more, not less, diverse place.

But Freshman Week at Harvard I discovered I hadn't remained as immune to elitism as I had thought. I watched others' excitement at living away from home with an arrogant sense of superiority. It wasn't new for me. So I sought out people I hardly knew from school to commiserate with. And I insulated myself from other people, waiting for classes to start and for the intellectual challenge that three years of Andover had prepared me to expect.

I should have known--Stoughton should have warned me. I pored over the mammoth course catalog, marvelling at its range and breadth. Foundering, I decided to take my proctor's advice and fulfill my requirements first. I groped for some sense of direction and settled on the survey courses--I'll read everything from Plato to Marx, I thought excitedly. Then I went to my first class, and fought for standing room with hundreds of other people. I listened (there were too many people to see) as the professor told us to fill out index cards; she would select and admit to the course a fraction of those assembled.

As inane lecture followed inane lecture, I realized, with increasing dismay and anger, that this was it. Harvard: a professor mumbling about arcane and vapid subjects, in love with the sound of his own voice, while I sat resentfully, one of hundreds. In sections, wan-looking graduate students droned on and on about trivial points in lectures while pathetically overeager students fell over each other to answer stupid questions. My knowledgeable proctor had screwed up again--he hadn't warned me that huge survey courses are probably the least challenging and most poorly taught classes at Harvard. I felt academically betrayed.