Mackenzie Boucher

Every year newly admitted students to Harvard are invited to spend the night at the college as a type of  orientation. That is where I am at as I am writing this, and I have some thoughts. I was fortunate enough to be part of the largest Visitas attendance in its history, 1340 students from 94 countries, and in these last two days, doors have opened that were once invisible to the naked eye. But first the basics. 

Within the first week of acceptance, students are invited to come to the two-day event in April (this year aligned with the Boston Marathon). If you opt-in to staying at the campus, you are assigned hosts, who will board you the best they can: on a sofa, an empty bed, an air mattress, a sleeping bag, but importantly, your hosts are not wardens. You meet them, you get an ID at check-in, and you are on your own. Luckily one of my hosts is part of the Harvard Radio Station WHRB 95.3 FM, so upon discovering our shared affinity for jazz, I was invited to add to the 6:00-8:00 am set, and even announce some of the songs I chose. Truly that was a unique experience, but from what I’ve heard from other Visitas, being invited to certain opportunities outside the scheduled events is not uncommon. After all, every scheduled event is completely optional. 

That being said, the relaxed schedule is freeing, but simultaneously intimidating. Right off the bat I was lost for an hour, looking for an event that would turn out to be canceled (and in a building under construction.) But while I was dreadfully lost, distrustful of Google Maps, and overstimulated by being alone in a city for the first time, I had the epiphany: I was alone in the city for the first time. Even if I wasn’t where I wanted to be at that moment, I was where I wanted to be for my whole life; I was surrounded by artfully designed buildings, collective ambition, and strangers who in a sense were all looking for something. 

My best navigations were done outside Google Maps, which seemed dead set on bringing me to the wrong place 9/10 of the time, with a physical map given to us at the start of the tour. On the Sunday leg, I met many incoming students (prone to sharing LinkedIns), but by far my highlight of the day was the Crimson Building tour. The school’s independent newspaper is completely self-funded, the building off-campus. The walk there was peaceful: light rain like an ambient walking video. I and two other Visitas were there at 5:00; being the earliest, we were given an exclusive tour and were introduced to the different sections, and the writers themselves shared their beats: notably the ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay and Harvard student news. After going rogue and going to the Harvard Bookstore and running into one of the two other people who went on the Crimson tour at the same time, we decided to go to the orchestra show at Sanders Theatre: getting lost at least three times on the way there (at least I wasn’t alone this time and had good company.) 

I may have spent too much time in the no-talking zone of the library for someone who was sent on a mission to be social, but genuinely, I wanted an experience close to being a student. I worked on this article and some math work in an empty library for much of the night of Day 1 and morning of Day 2 before class. In this process, I also went hours without my Visitas lanyard that at least in my mind was a big “hey this guy is new and lost” sign. 

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Mackenzie Boucher

The morning of Day 2 was to start early if I was going to make it to the WHRB building, and the morning was honestly what sealed the deal for me. Before sunrise the once bustling city was dormant, I made my Dunkin’ walk to Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C-Sharp Minor: IV Adagietto like the dramatic person I truly am, Nicole Kidman AMC promotional adjacent. Watching the sunrise from my dorm balcony felt poetic, looking over the Georgian and Classical buildings in the yard against the modern background of the city, espresso in hand. WHRB itself was a whimsical corner of campus, having back rooms that consisted of the jazz room, the newsroom, and classical room, the music of which was stacked floor to ceiling with records and CDs. If you’ve ever been in C33, the studio is that on steroids, with a fish tank full of baby doll feet incubating in the main room, and a penguin head my host nonchalantly said was used for initiation last weekend. She was overjoyed to have someone willing to come in next year and take over the 6-8 jazz spot, since if one thing is universal at Harvard, most students don’t wake up until 8:30 due to there being no 8:00 am lectures.

The two classes I attended that day, an English class with my host and a Latin class on Ovid’s Metamorphosis, both took place in Emerson Hall and were equal in confusion and awe. The English class discussed Waiting by Ha Jin; the general air of both classes was tense with anticipation for finals, to be a removed onlooker was a relief. Both classrooms had large windows that the spring sun seemed to dance through, giving the classrooms the same aura as a sun-soaked cottage one might vacation in to escape everyday reality. After class we went to the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, which is where I would end my weekend at Harvard. 

Reflecting on the weekend, most of what happened seems unreal: a goodbye note on a church step, a garden that the shadows danced through, Salsa dancers, Hammurabi’s code; yet the thought of living there has become less foreign to me, and brought new perspective to how I want to end the year. I think the pressure to make the high school experience be something it’s not – joyful, sentimental, a cinematic sequence of prom and graduation – left me there. Maybe it’s because I did not meet a single person from a public school, or maybe it’s the removal from Dartmouth, but all the end of the year festivities that once brought me stress now seemed to fade into the backdrop of what was to come: a life beyond graduating that was made of poetry, philosophy, and anonymous city life.