At the time, I thought, what club? The members of my high school class who came to Harvard weren't particularly close to one another. And it appeared even less possible that she had meant that everyone at Harvard was part of a club, because the average student probably knows less than 2 percent of Harvard undergraduates by name. I dismissed her as someone overly caught up in the inherently exclusionary nature of Harvard. Once she arrived, I felt sure, her sense that Harvard was an exclusive club would evaporate as she realized how decentralized the community was.

Now, I've faced the fact that my original assessment was slightly naive. Going to Harvard doesn't make you better than anyone else, and it certainly doesn't make you part of a superior group of beings. Yet it would be foolish to dismiss the influence many of the people you meet here can have in your life. Not everyone can grow up with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Not everyone here will become the Matt Damon of marketing, or the Ben Affleck of corporate lawyers. But many of us here will fulfill the golden future that admissions saw would arrive in their magical ball. And it won't be because of Harvard, for the most part.

Doubtless, most people who succeed upon graduation from Harvard would have done just as well graduating from another university. But Harvard does give us the chance to meet one another, and as you go through the typical college experience of partying, studying, and having late-night chats about Wittgenstein and existentialism, do keep that in mind.

Breezy H. Tollinger '02, a Crimson editor, is an english concentrator in Currier House.