Meet the teaching fellow who hated me.

I know, I know--I thought it too. How could any grade-giving official hate the high school teacher's lapdog?

You'd be surprised.

The Graduate Student From Hell (GSFH) sneered at my questions during section. She said my research paper topic suggestions were unacceptable. She reveled in telling me her office hours were at 8 a.m.--in Hilles Library (you'll trek there soon enough, my friend). She "lost" one of my assignments, a political cartoon we had to draw, and later "found" it all crumpled up at the bottom of her briefcase. She said I did not know how to write a midterm essay.

"Haven't you ever taken a college history course?" GSFH snorted.

"No," I responded. "This is my first year."

Hah! And I was planning on being a history and literature concentrator?

Talk about inferiority complexes. And I had to survive this class with this woman--the only TF for the course--for the entire semester.

I did survive. And you will too.

The Harvard experience is a humbling one. You will be amazed by the resources, by the opportunities, the challenges if you accept them. You will be stunned by the hilarity of it all.

The surreal moments always jump to memory first.

Primal Scream snuck up on me in December of 1996. I had no idea why people were screaming outside my window in Weld at midnight, so I checked it out and was more than slightly confused to see several dozen undergraduates running around the Yard--sans clothing--egged on by more than 2,000 onlookers. Whoa.

I produced a play in the spring. The director announced after our first show that she was canceling the rest of the performances (she later reconsidered). She also slapped one of the leading actors across the face off-stage during a performance. Yup.

There were small triumphs, too.

That research paper I wrote for my first semester history class led me to Gutman Library, where I was researching textbooks from the nineteenth century and found the actual tomes a few shelves away from my HOLLIS terminal.