Stereotyping has attached a dreadful stigma to every concentration. At a typical party you might hear: "Oh, you're an Economics major. What position do you play?" or "Irving there is a Computer Science major. He's going to make a lot of money, but he's not a real person." or "Nancy is a Gov jock. Not bad looking for a fascist, eh?" or even "Watch your wallet; Bruce there behind you is a Pre-Med."

A wily person can use these stereotypes to his advantage. An astonishingly higher number of Harvard Pre-Meds appear at Wellesley than have ever passed through any Cambridge laboratory. On the other end of the spectrum, a friend and I once fended off an attack from a squad of Lesley co-eds by telling them we were Fine Arts and Urdu majors.

If all of this seems rather a bit too negative to you, let me be the first to say what a good thing it is that all Harvard students are concentrating in the wrong areas. In fact, what I'm doing now demonstrates an important positive aspect of this deliberately and deliciously inefficient system--it gives people something to complain about other than the food.

Nothing is more fun than a group of people complaining about their majors, rather like soldiers in a hospital comparing their wounds. "I'm an English major" is roughly equivalent in such language to "I've got gangrene," while "That's nothing, I'm an Ec major" corresponds indirectly to "I got hit in the head with a bazooka." "Well, I'm a Pre-Med" means, of course, "I'm slightly wounded, but I survived by throwing my buddies on a live grenade."

Being in the wrong department also leads to incredibly creative adaptations and variations on success. If there's any possible way to a large, secure salary and fame, a Harvard student can find it. If that means being paid to read lines about buttocks to a crowd of undergraduates, then more power to him.

FLUSH.