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Audrey Todd
March 31, 2015
Spring Break is over and tomorrow is April 1st. In other words, each professor will give around ten more lectures and each TF will lead only five more sections. Each student will attend four more weeks of classes, fashion a couple of final research papers and take a few exams. Then, it will be summer. In just six weeks, I will be a college senior. This still seems implausible – rather, impossible – to me. Term two is flying by.
To me, when compared to the fall term, the spring semester always feels unusually short. After all, when in season, I am constantly shuffling between early morning lab hours, afternoon classes, four o'clock practices and scattered games, and I am pegging away at readings, problem sets and papers in any free time I can corral. With minimal down time, I don't realize how quickly time is passing.
That said, since April is (however suddenly) upon us, many students are divvying their time not only between reading textbooks, attending office hours and drafting paper outlines, but also between completing such schoolwork and finalizing their summer agenda. A good handful of my friends chose to pursue internships in finance and consulting, and since recruiting for this route is relatively early, most of them have jobs and housing resolved. But, for those of us that opted away from the Wall Street track, plans remain uncertain. At this point, most application deadlines have passed, but phone interviews and follow-ups are ongoing. Hopefully, at the end of the lengthy job search process, everyone will be satisfied.
With April also comes the anxiety-invoking Housing Lottery. The day before Spring Break, upperclassmen from each of Harvard's twelve houses woke up uncharacteristically early and stormed Harvard Yard with bullhorns and posters, excitedly notifying the freshmen that would be joining their respective houses the following year. After this chaos (more commonly known as Housing Day) ends, freshmen no longer have to agonize about housing. However, upperclassmen continue to worry about the nitty-gritty details of next year's living arrangements until all is settled mid-April. Perpetually anxious, we fret and ask our roommates: What if we don't get N+1 housing? Should we merge with other people so that we can pick earlier in the lottery? What if we pull a bad lottery number? Indeed, venting to our equally-stressed roommates only adds fuel to the fire, but until the lottery process is complete, it's unlikely the habit will change.
Evidently, even though summer is all-too-quickly approaching, the last several weeks of the semester will be anything but stress-free. Fortunately, I have at least eight more regular season lacrosse games (and hopefully a few postseason games) to look forward to. Plus, since tomorrow is April 1st, maybe I'll take a quick study break to play a small Jim Halpert-esque prank on my (forgiving) roommate.
