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Reading Period is that time of heaven/hell when students have approximately a week and a half of “no” classes to spend time reviewing for their finals and writing their final papers. It’s wonderful because classes meet less often. It’s awful because it’s a mammoth amount of free time to re-remember what you should have learned this past semester.
Kids at other schools looong for this. Harvard kids have a tendency to love and hate it because it is and isn’t quite the original conception of the “Reading Period.” Sometimes classes still meet, sometimes you have four papers due and take-home finals.
Here are some tips I’ve gained from my 3 previous reading periods on how best to survive and utilize this precious but damning amount of free time.
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Mental space — like physical space — is what we have very little of as college students. When I took on a leadership role in January, one of the former officers mentioned, “It doesn’t take up much time, but it takes up a lot of mental space.”
What she meant was that the amount of mental energy you needed to devote to the position was much larger than the time actually required. This struck me as an — oh, so that’s what I’ve been doing wrong all along — moment.
Last semester, I was at odds with my schedule (or google cal rather). I would stare at the white empty boxes that seemed to populate my schedule at the end of the week, but when I mentally sat down to balance the accounts, I kept coming up short. It seemed like I had a lot of free time (suppose n hours/week), but I didn’t seem to get n hours of work accomplished and I never actually felt like I was anything less than busy.
Troubling.
Thus, I will try to use the concept of “mental space” to better manage your time (and happiness!) in this entry.
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It is uncanny how many of my friends have confessed with particular enthusiasm: I hate Harvard. Some attribute it to the “sophomore slump.” Others complain — rightly so — about the arrogance, stupidity and frustrating qualities of our classmates.
I will admit it is true. One of the one true pastimes of the Harvard student is complaining about Harvard. From food to bureaucracy, from professors to classes, Harvard students are notorious for the amount of complaining they do.
But — for all of our complaining, we do very little to try to nip the unhappiness bud. It seems like we glorify our unhappiness: you think your life is bad? well, I just had 3 200-level problem sets due, a thesis to write, and ten organizations to save from self-combustion.
Right. This entry will be dedicated to why happiness is as important of an asset as time (arguably one of the most valuable things a Harvard student has, but that’s another entry).
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Yes sir, that is my lovely lovely moleskine. Yes ma’am, that is indeed a binder-clip pen holder.
The moleskine is effortlessly classy, slightly pretentious and absolutely necessary. It keeps me sane. It gets me to do things. It makes me almost feel like a math genius — almost. (I say that because I do in fact know of two math geniuses who carry around moleskines to sketch the mathematical equivalent of doodling.)
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Harvard, fortunately, has what is known as a “Shopping Period,” in which students have a full week before actually deciding on which courses to register for. This is the perfect time to test out a new professor, see how interesting that Lit class is, or just to sit back and relax as school starts (sort of).
While we all know that previous year’s recommendations, Professors, class size, syllabus, workload and difficulty are important, there are some things that are notoriously overlooked…
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