{shortcode-05e5ec1229a2368b64379b2d6b7fc5ee2207a41a}
{shortcode-21cc3534b02e5a90dd1b6e61be0fe28423896a7e} few hours before his Spanish class, Alex T. Wright ’23-’24 found himself stranded in a field in New Jersey.
Alex, a recreational pilot, had flown down to Princeton to visit his younger brother. But when he went to fly back, the key to his plane’s engine snapped off. With no spare key and no other way back to Boston, Alex was left with only one option: hotwire the plane.
“I flew that plane all the way back from New Jersey to Boston on a hotwired engine,” Alex says nonchalantly, as if he’s describing any other morning commute.
He grins. “That’s why you always take the afternoon Spanish class. So, if stuff happens, you can still get there.”
To Alex, navigating high-pressure situations is second nature. During his pandemic gap year, he moved to California and took an interest in extreme sports. After three years of practice, Alex has now mastered the art of spearfishing, become a certified skydiving instructor, and jumped out of military planes over the Pyramids of Giza. When I ask him about the most dangerous things he’s done, the hotwired plane doesn’t even make the list.
But he wouldn’t call himself a thrill-seeker. According to Alex, if you’re approaching extreme sports looking for adrenaline, you’re doing it wrong.
“I want to be clear that there’s a distinction between the kind of risk teenage boys take, which is where they’re just being idiots,” he says, “and activities in which you have a very real appreciation of what you’re doing, which typically only happen with skill.”
For Alex, taking risks is a way to develop expertise and engage with the world more authentically.He grew up in London, a setting he says wasn’t optimal for engaging with the outdoors. When he moved to California, Alex wanted to explore nature. He started by getting his pilot’s license, then shifted to paragliding and scuba diving.
“Diving is awesome. But in some ways, it’s an inauthentic way to engage with the water,” says Alex. To explore the sea in a less manufactured way, Alex decided to try freediving — where divers hold their breath until resurfacing rather than relying on scuba gear.
“It’s hard to do. There’s a lot more risk involved with freediving,” says Alex. “But the trade-off is that it feels much more authentic.”
To Alex, taking risks is meditative — a way to practice being fully present under pressure.
“The whole point of meditation is that it demands a huge amount of focus,” says Alex. “In the same way, whenever you’re in a scenario which requires a really high degree of skill, and the consequences of it going wrong are death or serious bodily injury, it requires you to be super present in the moment.”
During one freedive, his equipment got caught on a piece of coral.
“Everything in my body made me want to just keep pushing right toward the surface. But I knew that I had to swim back down to solve the problem. And that’s a really hard thing to do when you feel like you’re running out of breath,” says Alex.
Paradoxically, Alex often feels calmest while in risky situations.
“It really kind of clears out any peripheral concerns,” he says.
I ask him about risks he’s taken at Harvard, but Alex laughs. The Social Studies and Philosophy concentrator says that compared to the other experiences we’ve talked about, “they’ll be boring answers, like moving to a different country or doing a degree program that sounds like a fourth-grade class.”
Alex’s experiences taking risks add perspective to his life at Harvard. Harvard’s competitive environment can encourage students “to lose perspective on how important the things you do are,” he says. To be successful, you often “have to think that doing a pset or getting whatever recommendation is as important as the firefighter who is going into the building and pulling people out.”
Taking risks pulls Alex out of this mentality.
“Risk gives you some perspective,” he says. “It’s really hard to get super stressed about a pset when you’re like, ‘No one’s gonna die, all my friends are safe. I’m not in imminent risk.’”
Taking risks has made Alex more intrepid in all areas of life. Compared to jumping out of planes, braving a tough class or awkward social situation doesn’t seem like a risk at all. He believes we can all benefit from more adventure in our day-to-day lives.
—Magazine writer Adelaide E. Parker can be reached at adelaide.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her @adelaide_prkr.
