But the most surprising thing about the future is this: Twenty years after Harvard, the state of your brain matters a lot more than the state of your resume. Some workaholic students emerged in the spring of my senior year looking like Charlton Heston after he comes down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments--burned out and still smoking, clutching a Hoopes Prize instead of stone tablets. Still today (the future), these people have the dynamism and social warmth of a strep throat culture.

Knowing them, this is my advice from 2020: Be smarter and happier through doing things you like. Enjoy Gen. Ed. 105? Get some friends. They'll help you make the same sorts of discoveries about yourself. Afraid to say what you really feel because of Harvard's hyper-liberal atmosphere? Say it anyway--most of those people like a good fight as much as you do. Then you'll know yourself well enough to know what you really want out of life, and you'll know others well enough to make them give it to you. These may sound like the tritest of truisms, but we Harvard students disobey conventional wisdom like the producers of "Battlefield Earth." Take my advice, half-pints, and in the future you'll do just fine.

Except for all you people leering instead of Screaming at Primal Scream. You're going to be ushers at adult movie theaters in Nevada. And don't think I'll be sorry.

David A. Fahrenthold '00 is a history concentrator in Dunster House. This is his final column.