what harvard feels like from each year
words from a frosh, sophomore, junior, and recently graduated senior
Hey everyone. I wanted to give a quick disclaimer.
This was a project I organized in the latter half of the Spring semester.
Harvard means something different depending on where you are in it. A freshman and a senior share the same study spots and the same Cambridge winters, and yet they’re living almost entirely different lives, both entering into new chapters of their lives. I wanted to see what, if anything, connects those experiences, and if there are any takeaways and lessons we can learn from this shared place we experience together. The following is written by students at Harvard from each grade level.
In the future, I would love for more people who would want to help write! Let me know if you’d be interested by emailing me at zachchen@college.harvard.edu
Written by Lena - Class of 2029:
One of the first things I learned when I got to campus this fall was that nearly everything is late here. That struck me oddly. I expected everyone to be just as type-A as I was, showing up five minutes early to everything, with a perfectly color-coded Google Calendar (personal events in pink, workouts in yellow, classes in blue). But about five hours into my freshman year, I was quickly made aware that start times here are more of a suggestion. Standing on the steps of Widener, waiting for my pre-orientation group to be announced, I met many of my new classmates. It was a pleasant experience, all in all. I made some new friends, trauma-bonded over shivering in the cold. A girl I have rarely seen since offered me her hoodie; I gratefully accepted. I had expected cold precision, but I was met with lateness and laughter. This year, I had the privilege of running with the Harvard College Run Club. If you check our mailing list, we meet at 4:45. If you were to show up at 4:45, you can expect to be waiting for at least 5 minutes. All of this to say: people at Harvard are uniquely busy. It is impossible to be in nine places at once, and so the gcal truly does become more of a suggestion, a menu rather than an agenda.
Before coming to Harvard, I honestly wasn’t sure if I would like the environment. I spent years of my life saying I didn’t like Harvard, partially to be contrarian, but partially because I truly believed it would be too preppy, too formal, too smart. I expected the people to be power-hungry geniuses with hypercompetitive personalities that made for brutal conversations. I expected perfect time management, perfect outfits, and an unhealthy obsession with work. I certainly didn’t expect anyone to actually care about having a good time. Obviously, everyone at Harvard only went there for the education. Deep down though, I’m not sure anyone would turn down Harvard, so when I was fortunate enough to get in, I had to give it a shot. Despite all my years of hating, Harvard is undeniably an incredible place. Beyond this, however, the people are not perfect, and they DO enjoy things. Yes, everyone is wildly talented, just as I predicted. But, the people here are also interesting, and willing to talk with you about the things they are interested in.
As I reflect on my freshman year, I know that it is truly the people who make Harvard the place it is. Something I’ve come to realize is that here, a single interaction can make you friends with someone. Everyone seems to know everyone, a product of general friendliness and the unashamed willingness to ask for someone’s name over, and over, and over again. People here will show up for you and make time for you, even with overwhelmingly packed schedules. But beyond that, there is something ethereal about the busyness, the lateness, the constant rush that everyone seems to be managing so well. There is a buzzing hum about the entire campus, because there simply is never enough time in the day. The Harvard student is the embodiment of Ben Franklin’s adage: if you want something done, ask a busy person. In spite of, or perhaps because of, heavy courseloads and lengthy extracurriculars, Harvard students are excelling. The people I meet day to day are not only talented; they are interesting. They are engaged with the world around them, and they stay that way by consistently filling their time.
Lately I’ve been ruminating on the fact that while we’re often told to do things because “life is short,” life is actually quite long. Our time at Harvard may be short, but I don’t think Harvard students fill their days in an attempt to do everything before it’s too late. Instead, they are embracing the fact that life is long and using their time to make their lives as full as possible. People here didn’t peak in high school. They’re still working, still waiting for their peak. The definitive characteristic of Harvard culture is a consistent drive toward self-improvement. This has influenced me in countless ways. In my classes, I am inspired to strive for greater understanding, constantly surprised by how much people absorb. In clubs, I’m encouraged by people’s ability to befriend and connect with everyone around them. Even in my friendships, I have been pushed to improve–whether that means working out more, or spending a Saturday volunteering.
The chaos of Harvard can seem overwhelming at times, but it is ultimately encouraging. It is a sign of life, a beautiful reminder that there are still people who care, who are striving for more. There may never be quite enough time for everything, but at Harvard, that doesn’t stop anyone from doing the most they can, even if it means showing up a few minutes late.
Written by Zach Chen, Sophomore - Class of 2028:
There’s a quiet irony to the pace of life in college. When you’re in school and studying, all you want is to be done. But after you’re done and you’ve rested up, all you want is to come back to school and see your friends again. There seems to be this tension with our lives — a push and pull we can never quite resolve.
Sophomore year was no different. It was tough. In some ways, sophomore year is a transition point. If freshman year is about getting acquainted with college, making friends, and having fun, then sophomore year is about getting a job, taking hard classes, and becoming integrated with the Harvard ecosystem and people.
But doing those things well don’t come easily. One of the main challenges I’ve noticed is socially. Maintaining and growing relationships is hard. Everyone is so busy. And if you don’t put in effort into a relationship, it can easily fade. A lot of this year is implicitly or explicitly choosing who you want to spend time with, or spending time alone. What strikes me is how little of that choosing feels truly intentional. It just happens. You look up in April and realize you haven’t seen someone you genuinely like in two months, and neither of you did anything wrong. Life just moved on without you.
On that note, we are shaped and influenced by our environment much more than we like to think: the houses we are sorted into, the people we surround ourselves by, the preorientation programs we get. All of it plays a role in our experience at college and in life. And while we are all shaped by these different factors, college life seems to rhyme in a way where we can understand and speak the same language of our shared background. Never the same exact way, but similar enough where we form creeds of shared identity. Harvard. Our houses. Clubs. Recruiting. Careers.
Another thing we love is optimization. Every one of us is calculating the next best step to take. Whether that’s walking this specific way to Lamont so I can study for 3 minutes longer, or thinking about career paths, or how best to navigate romantic interests. But in that pursuit of optimizing everything, we might miss the very reason to live. We live, as humans, not to be some cog in a machine or a system but to experience fully everything life has to offer — the grief, the stillness, the joy, the push to become better, the feeling of water rushing down your face, and more. And perhaps there are parts of our lives missing simply because we’ve treated too much of our lives as a game to be won rather than a life to be lived.
It seems engrained in our system that we do so. It’s a way of thinking we build up from high school and which carries over to college and how we approach our lives after too. Figure out the game and then go win it.
Psychologically, the end of sophomore year is scary because you know that the next time you step foot on campus you’ll be more than halfway done. You’re going to be a junior. And juniors? They’re the upperclassmen. In some way you have to command respect and be the older figure on campus that underclassmen can look up to. It felt like just yesterday that we all arrived at Harvard for the first time. The first time eating at Berg during Visitas. The first friend made. The first hangout. Those first few months felt like they would last forever. But we all knew time just keeps rolling on, and soon it was spring and then summer, and then we were back here again as sophomores. And now we’re going to be juniors.
It’s a little sad but it’s interesting to think about—halfway through college and most of us are still single. During this semester, I noticed the lack of romance there is at Harvard. Most of my friends are single, myself included. Culturally, we seem to care much more about our careers than our love lives. Finals period is for studying. Each week’s problem set seems to take the whole week up. The weekends are for recovering. And in between it all there’s almost no time to find someone let alone get to know them well enough for a relationship.
What makes it worse is the culture surrounding dating. Word spreads like wildfire. When one person makes a move and things don’t work out, they give up. Long gone are the days of cold approach. When someone is talking or dating, they wonder if they can find someone better. Better to drop them than to miss finding the one true love.
In my PHIL16 class this semester — sex, love, and friendship — we talked about how there was a sex recession on campuses across America, and globally too. More and more young people are having less sex, spending less time in relationships, and spending more time alone. What’s interesting is that we all recognize the truth of this at Harvard. We all feel it. But we feel powerless to change anything. It’s a fundamental cultural issue. A malaise affecting us all.
While this issue is not unique to Harvard, Harvard also seems to be a uniquely fertile place for it to occur. The people who come here are the students who spent high school sacrificing their relationships & love lives for academics & extracurriculars. It’s what we’ve done all this time. And maybe Harvard becomes the second place where it happens again, almost automatically, without anyone deciding it should.
The causes run deeper than campus culture though. They are societal, political, technological. Quantitatively, humans are doing better than ever before but qualitatively, life quality has stayed flat or quietly decayed. I think this is especially true when it comes to relationships. Phones, and the technological sprawl that followed afterwards like apps, have made things convenient while degrading the very connections they’re supposed to help with. Social media has amplified objectification, made parasocial relationships feel like real ones, and created a culture that rewards our first-order desires — the ones that feel good in the moment — over our second-order desires, the ones that actually improve us and the world around us.
And yet, when the semester ends and you finally exhale and go home and sleep and stop thinking about problem sets for a week — something strange happens. You start to miss it. Not the stress, not the recruiting anxiety, not the optimization. You miss the people. The late nights in someone’s common room that were supposed to be study sessions and became something else entirely. The dining hall conversations that meandered into philosophy and then into gossip. That feeling of walking into Quincy dining hall and knowing, without checking, that there will be someone there you’re glad to see.
That’s the quiet irony I started with, and I’m not sure I’ve resolved it. Maybe it doesn’t need resolving. The PSETs, the recruiting, the optimization — none of that is what you’ll miss. But all of it happened alongside people, and that’s the part that stays.
There’s something strange about the way Harvard bonds you to people. It’s not like summer camp or a road trip, where the closeness comes from uninterrupted time together. It’s almost the opposite — you’re all under the same pressure, running the same race, and somewhere in between the problem sets and the recruiting cycles and the dining hall meals that last exactly as long as your next obligation allows, you look around and realize these people know you. Not because you gave them the time to, but because the place didn’t leave any of you much choice. You were all just here, together, trying to figure it out.
And so when it ends — when you pack up your room and drive home and the semester finally releases its grip — it’s not the classes you think about. It’s running into someone on the way to class, stopping for five minutes, and walking away feeling lighter than you did before. That’s a small thing. But after a year of everyone being so busy, of relationships fading quietly because no one had the bandwidth to maintain them, of a campus full of people feeling lonelier than it should — a small thing like that starts to feel like everything.
Written by Wilmer Reyes-Rosales, Junior - Class of 2027, Psych Concentrator:
The thought of going to a college miles away from home scared me. However, going to Harvard seemed like an incredible opportunity for me. I remember arriving freshman year, terrified that no one would talk to me. Harvard felt so much bigger than the small rural town I came from. I thought I would somehow be behind before I even started. The people here surprised me, proving to be some of the best individuals I have ever met.
I didn’t click with everyone, and I acknowledged that it was okay. Harvard can feel intimidating and lonely sometimes. But most people I met were also trying to figure out who they were as individuals. Once I stopped trying so hard to seem impressive and simply let myself be friendly, things slowly fell into place. I found people who genuinely liked me for me.
A lot of my Harvard experience was shaped by extracurriculars. Fuerza Latina gave me a cultural sense of familiarity and warmth that reminded me of home. The Harvard Vietnamese Association introduced me to people and traditions I probably never would have encountered if I hadn’t put myself out there. Joining the Harvard Asian American Dance Troupe pushed me outside my comfort zone in the best way, and I now realize that I love dancing! Lastly, working at The Harvard Shop became meaningful because of the friendships formed during fun and stressful shifts.
Looking back, I realize most of my favorite memories are not tied to achievements. They are tied to people. Harvard has taught me that friendships are both fragile and beautiful. I have made many close friends here, and I have also lost some along the way. Some friendships faded because life became busy. Others changed because we changed. It is simply part of growing up. Even if we no longer talk every day, those people remain in my heart because they shaped parts of who I became.
For some reason, I also keep getting attached to seniors. Every year, I meet upperclassmen who become mentors, role models, or older siblings away from home. And every year, it hurts watching them graduate. There’s something emotional about seeing your best friends every day around campus and then suddenly watching them move into entirely new lives. Watching everything they accomplish inspires me. Watching them reassures me that life continues beyond Harvard. The strangest part is realizing that next year, I will be in their shoes.
Junior year feels like standing in the middle of a bridge. I am no longer the scared freshman who arrived unsure if he belonged, but I also am not yet at the end. I can finally look back and recognize how much I have changed. One of the biggest changes has been realizing what I actually want from my future. When I first came to Harvard, I felt pressure to chase prestige because that is what it often feels like everyone here is doing. Over time, though, I realized the moments that fulfilled me most were always connected to helping people feel seen, supported, and safe.
Somewhere between psychology classes, mentoring experiences, and late-night conversations with friends, I figured out I want to become a therapist. I want to work with underserved communities, especially children and adolescents. I want to create spaces where people feel emotionally safe in ways many of us did not always have growing up. Harvard helped me realize that success means very little to me if I cannot use it to help others. I also just want to be happy.
Another unexpected gift Harvard gave me was a love for language learning. I started taking Portuguese here on a whim, and it completely changed me. The Portuguese department has been one of the warmest and most supportive communities I have found at Harvard. Learning the language opened up an entirely new world for me and fostered a deeper love for languages in general. Now, I hope to eventually learn French, Italian, Vietnamese, and Korean too. Language learning feels less like an academic requirement and more like a way of connecting with people and cultures beyond my own.
Harvard also taught me something I never fully believed about myself before: I can work hard. There were many moments when I doubted whether I was capable enough to keep going. Difficult semesters, late nights studying, balancing responsibilities, and feeling emotionally exhausted at times. But over time, I realized there is a unique satisfaction in reaching the finish line after struggling through something difficult. Not because everything turned out perfectly, but because I proved to myself that I could endure it.
Going into my junior year, I became involved with FYRE (First-Year Retreat Experience) as a team leader. FYRE is Harvard’s pre-orientation program designed to support first-generation, low-income students as they navigate the transition into higher education. Since I was once a FYRE participant myself coming into Harvard, returning as a team leader felt deeply personal. I saw so much of my freshman self in the students I mentored: scared, uncertain, but hopeful. Being able to guide them through that transition reminded me why mentorship and community matter so much. I hope to continue serving my communities long after graduation because those experiences shaped me just as much as any class ever did.
I am still trying to figure out who I will become, but I feel like I have an idea and a plan. Honestly, I think it’s also okay not to have a plan. I know my passion, drive, and love for learning will carry me somewhere meaningful. I am no longer the guy who first arrived at Harvard afraid that nobody would talk to him. And I think that quiet transformation, the one that happens slowly through ordinary days, friendships, heartbreaks, conversations, and moments of growth, is probably the most important part of college.
Written by Anonymous Senior - Class of 2026:
There’s something strange about the end of college: everyone talks about it constantly, and yet it still feels unreal. As the year comes to a close, I don’t think graduation has actually hit me yet. Harvard has existed for so long as its own sealed world, a world where the people I love most are only a few steps away at any moment. The idea that this chapter is ending still feels abstract, like something happening in the distance rather than something already arriving.
But yesterday, for a brief moment, it became real for a moment. We were talking about what our friendships would look like after graduation, and suddenly I could feel the weight of it. Right now, friendship feels effortless. It lives in proximity. In late-night walks, spontaneous knock-on-the-door conversations, sitting beside each other in dining halls without planning it days in advance. There is such a quiet luxury in knowing the people who matter most to you are always nearby. Soon, that version of closeness will disappear. The ease of walking two minutes just to say hello will no longer exist. Our lives will scatter into different cities, jobs, routines, and timelines. Interactions that now feel ordinary may eventually become reduced to a few catch-up calls a year, occasional texts, maybe weekends carved out months in advance.
And somehow, I already feel at peace with that before it has even happened. Maybe because it feels inevitable. Or maybe because I feel so deeply invested in these friendships now that I trust they will survive distance, even if they change form. I think college teaches you that love is not always measured by frequency. Some people become so embedded in your life that even absence cannot fully remove them. There are friendships that stop being circumstantial and start becoming part of the architecture of who you are.
I keep realizing something else, too: every phase of life feels enormous while you are inside of it. Completely consuming. At different moments in college, I thought certain failures, heartbreaks, anxieties, or uncertainties would define everything forever. But when I look back now, those moments seem smaller somehow– not insignificant, but no longer world-ending. Time softens things. Distance reorganizes what once felt unbearable. Looking ahead at the vastness of the future makes the past shrink into something almost tender.
Maybe that is part of what Harvard actually does to a person. Not just intellectually, but emotionally. It compresses life into an intensity that feels all-encompassing while you are inside it. The relationships feel permanent, the stress feels existential, the ambitions feel urgent. And then, slowly, you leave the bubble and realize the world is much larger than this place ever allowed you to imagine. Harvard becomes less of a physical place and more of a lens through which you understand ambition, intimacy, insecurity, success, loneliness, and yourself.
I think what lingers after college is not the prestige or even the accomplishments people talk about most. It is the strange ache of realizing that an entire world once existed so vividly around you, and one day it simply became a memory. Yet maybe growing up is learning that endings are rarely as catastrophic as they feel in advance. Life keeps expanding beyond every version of yourself you thought was permanent. And someday, this moment that feels so immense right now will also become small in retrospect– another beautiful, temporary chapter folded quietly into the rest of a life.
Fire