Gone, too, is the easy crutch of achievement in evaluating these choices. Everyone here has succeeded at something and failed at something, so we lack the instant validation of being First Place Everything, or the equally clear feedback of abject failure.
So here, in the end, is my proposal for what makes us all members of the Class of 2001. Crimson Dance Team and Crimson newspaper, Cabot or Kirkland, we have all led different Harvard lives that may have deeply enriched each other’s, or may never have intersected. I cannot say which of the many versions of a College career is the better one. But in the end, beyond the Veritas fleeces, what we all share is that here we have chosen one or another version of ourselves. Forget about the Core; our Harvard careers and our own identities have been the consequences of our choices. For better or worse, Harvard was what we made of it.
Rachel P. Kovner ’01, a social studies concentrator in Quincy House, was an executive editor of The Crimson in 2000.