“The human relationships you form in unstructured time with your roommates and friends,” writes Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ‘68, “may have a stronger influence on your later life than the content of some of the courses you are taking.” This advice, in his letter to the Class of 2005 entitled “Slow Down,” is some of the best that an administrator could give to an incoming Harvard student. Lewis is right, of course, and deserves praise for asking you, a group of inevitably ambitious, workaholic first-years, to slow down and smell the roses.

Unfortunately, for most Harvard students, preserving some leisure time is easier said than done. The College provides mind-blowing opportunities, but as first-years will discover next week when they get their first glimpse at their course syllabi, it also provides an immense amount of reading.

Before this degenerates into a lazy junior complaining about a large workload, let me make a couple of things clear. The writing component of Harvard courses is fine—maybe even a little light. Writing is the most important skill anyone can learn in college, and some of the humanities courses would be better off scrapping their superficial response papers and adding a few 10-page in-depth assignments.

But the amount of reading that most professors assign is, simply put, impossible to do. Some are worse culprits than others, but it is rare to find a humanities or social science course with a manageable reading load. I enjoy reading 100 pages each night—but few students can read 100 pages a night for each class.

Of course, Harvard being Harvard, people don’t like to admit that they’re behind on the reading. As an eager first-year, I too proudly proclaimed that I was doing all the reading. By the end of the first semester, I wasn’t. Each semester since then, I’ve resolved to do all the reading—and failed every time.

There is no easy solution. Until professors realistically reevaluate their reading lists, students will continue to be confronted by more reading than they can do—at least, without becoming speed-reading hermits. Some of the more perceptive and generous teaching fellows will tell you which readings are essential and which are extraneous, but you can’t count on it.

It’s depressing, because most of the books on the lists are incredibly interesting and engaging. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of bittersweet regret that comes around Reading Period when you read a particularly good selection and finally understand what your professor and teaching fellow meant when they were talking about Kant’s categorical imperative seven weeks ago.

But rest assured—everyone else is in the same boat. In high school, most Harvard students did all the work, and did it excellently. Here, if you get in the mindset that you’re going to read every last book on the list, you’ll end up driving yourself crazy. I don’t mean to suggest that you neglect your classes—just that you take the reading lists with a grain of salt.