to explore common research interests (see ments for admission to degree programs. neering training, yielding a program that “Academic Allston, At Last,” July-August Students will be immersed in system engi- should prepare “individuals who have the 2016, page 22), but the new degree acceler- neering; complete the HBS first-year M.B.A. best of both” disciplines. The S.M./M.B.A. ates their collaboration. Its parameters sug- required curriculum; participate in class- program aims to train “the next generation gest the kinds of synergies the deans hope room exercises in entrepreneurship (from of leaders,” as Nohria put it, “the set of leaders their faculties will realize. Applicants must assessing customer needs through design the world looks to” in technology enterprises. have an undergraduate degree in engineer- and prototyping, to marketing); take a new Read an in-depth account of the degree, ing, computer science, or a related techni- integrated-design course; and pursue team its underlying pedagogies, and the schools’ cal field; at least two years of work experi- projects as a capstone for their degree. developing connections in Allston, in the ence—preferably in designing or developing In outlining this course of study, Doyle broader Harvard context, at harvardmag. technology-intensive products; and the cre- said, “our faculties have found a perfect bal- com/hbsseasdegree-17. dentials to satisfy both schools’ require- ance” of management and technical-engi- vjohn s. rosenberg

would leave a small stain on the yellow of THE UNDERGRADUATE the sponge. By March the sponge was uni- formly pink and we were good friends. When I met him, I was still new to cam- pus. I was still figuring out where I liked to College Friends do my school work and where I liked to hang out after it was done. The rhythms of my by lily scherlis ’18 daily life were still malleable; they molded easily around my new friend’s habits, and his (firmly established over his three pre- ’m starting to feel like I’ve already you worked or ate meals at the times and in vious semesters) adjusted a bit to accom- squandered my prime friend-making the places you did or lived in the same suite modate my preferences. During the sub- years. An older acquaintance was re- as you—got to be a part of your life. It was sequent two and a half years, our personal cently telling me that it gets harder easier to let the other people go. routines changed in tandem with one an- Iafter college. There just won’t be this many other: when we got sick of Café Gato Rojo, people your age around ever again, she said, I met my best friend in January of my fresh- the preferred work venue of my freshman and smiled grimly. Or, if there are, they’ll all man year, when the two of us were newly in spring, we started to spend afternoons at have full-time jobs and apartments far away charge of putting on events for the College’s the Darwin’s Ltd. on Mount Auburn Street from yours and plenty of friends already. At oldest literary magazine, The Harvard Advo- instead, and by my friend’s senior spring (my college everyone has so much time; every- cate. This meant emailing a handful of fairly junior spring), we were logging dozens of one lives so close together; everyone has so unknown poets, carrying chairs, purchasing hours a week at Petsi Pies on Putnam Ave. much in common. I’m still close with my snacks and (importantly) boxed wine, and Sometimes our routines got out of sync—he college friends, she added. doing the dishes after. This was how I got would spend a week working in Widener My Harvard social experience has con- to know him—I would wash and he would while I was hard at work on an installation sisted of a handful of very close friendships dry, or vice versa. We learned to stretch our in the Carpenter Center—but they always amid a truckload of dead-end acquaintance- fingers deep enough into the tall glasses to gravitated back together. ships where neither of us was invested get at the congealed red wine at the bot- Rather than a particular café or a dining enough to make time for each other. Maybe tom with soapy sponges. We sang along to hall, his friendship became my home at school. we each felt a little guilty, but given all of Fiona Apple and talked about our respective I don’t think there was a single day between our commitments, how were we supposed love-interests. The chromatin of the wine that March and this May, when he graduated, to fit each other in? In the face of the post- that we were both on campus and didn’t see collegiate social void, I should probably be each other. I always wound up inadvertently reaching out to as many people as possible learning his course schedule, and people tend- to consolidate tenuous connections into du- ed to assume we were secretly dating (though rable relationships, but it’s not just me. It our affection for each other has always been seems like everyone around here is guilty strictly platonic). His presence—even after of repeatedly postponing plans until the all the getting-to-know each other was gone, acquaintanceship dies on the vine. even after we’d talked our way through all I don’t know if it’s my fault or Har- possible topics of conversation into well- vard’s, but I know this is true for many of worn silence—was a comfort. I could always us: at some point, maybe early sophomore take shelter from solitude in that silence. year, our lives started to congeal around When, several weeks before my a routine. Whoever fit into that rou- friend’s graduation, I learned I’d be tine—whoever worked in the places spending this summer in Manhattan, I

Illustrations by Rebecca Clarke Harvard Magazine 25

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal was apprehensive. “I have no friends there,” far away, and so am I, in a way. Maybe we I told him. I imagined myself spending each will Skype each other sometime soon, but day sitting silently in front of a desktop the dynamic will have changed: there computer in some corporate cubicle and will be a month to hear about, in- then each night sitting silently in front of stead of an hour. There will be nei- a television in some empty summer sublet. ther the comfortable silence of each of “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Just make sure you us hard at work, nor the almost audible reach out to people. If you forget to reach energy of the frenetic conversations that out to people, you’ll go nuts.” punctuated those silences. Instead, we will I snapped back at him. He knew I catch up. hated reaching out to people. Here’s This loss of resolution—as if our re- how “reaching out” seemed to work: lationship is an image file that must be you go on one coffee date and talk to compressed in order to travel long dis- each other, and then you go on another, and about a month now. I’d always assumed that tances—terrifies me. In a low-res friendship, then you go on another. You “get to know” we’d long ago passed a certain threshold of maybe you enjoy catching up, and Skype ses- each other. The underlying principle of the closeness, perhaps measured in the num- sions are expressions of enduring affection. coffee-date paradigm is that conversation ber of hours we’d spent laughing and cry- But those encounters might also be just an can catalyze friendship, that knowledge of ing in each other’s company, that made our attempt to petrify the intimacy, to smooth another person and intimacy are tied up in friendship immune to time and distance. I over any grief. It feels like turning the fruit a chicken-and-egg loop of tangled causal- assumed we’d be the kind of people who of our relationship into some kind of a jelly, ity. You learn random facts about each other would still be hanging out when we were a garnish for toast instead of a living thing. until you magically feel close to one another. 45 and it wouldn’t require reconnecting be- I think I snapped at him when he told I was scared of being alone, and even cause we wouldn’t have lost touch yet. No me to reach out because I felt (unreason- more scared of being lonely in constant one would ever have to say anything was ably) like he was supposed to do something company, cumulatively spending hun- “just like old times” because there would to rescue me from my impending isolation. dreds of hours in noisy subway cars pressed always be new times to appreciate instead. This summer felt like the prelude to my in- against other anonymous bodies, all of us Sometimes I text: “how are you?” and he evitable return to a campus where coffee going to and returning from dinners with responds. His texts bring me information dates would be once again imperative, and acquaintances. I didn’t want artificial meals about the work he is doing and the plac- that, in turn, would be the prelude to my with people who would never be real parts es he has been—the answers to my ques- ejection into the colder real world, where of my life. I wanted familiar silences. tions—but this isn’t what I want from them. those coffee dates would be harder to come This kind of sporadic text-based conversa- by. I wanted him to tell me I could keep our My friend moved to Europe shortly af- tion was never our thing, and the responses friendship, exactly as is, the whole way. ter graduating. We haven’t really spoken in feel distant. I guess that makes sense: he’s New Fellows

The magazine’s Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate physics of gravity” as Fellows for the 2017-2018 academic year will be Natasha Lasky sources for a future ’19 and Tawanda Mulalu ’20. The fellows join the editorial staff poetry collection; he and contribute to the magazine during the year, writing the “Un- also spent one week dergraduate” column and reporting for both the print publication in China teaching a and harvardmagazine.com, among other responsibilities. seminar on “Africa, Lasky, of Menlo Park, California, and Lowell House, is a junior America; Hip-Hop, concentrating in history and literature, with a secondary in vi- Poetry” through the sual and environmental studies; she has written, directed, pro- Harvard Summit for duced, and edited several short films. Her extracurricular com- Young Leaders in mitments include serving as features editor at The Harvard China program. (He Advocate, DJ-ing for WHRB, and tutoring at the Harvard College and a friend last year Writing Center. This past summer she improved her Spanish formed their own language skills and studied Argentine literature in Buenos Aires. hip-hop group, Basimane—“boys” in his native Setswana—and Mulalu, of Gaborone, Botswana, and Adams House, is a soph- have performed at colleges in the Boston area.) omore contemplating a joint concentration in physics and phi- The fellowships are supported by Jonathan J. Ledecky ’79, losophy. A writer for The Harvard Advocate’s features board, he M.B.A. ’83, and named in honor of his mother. For updates on spent much of the summer as a Houghton Library undergraduate past Ledecky Fellows and links to their work, see http://harvard- fellow, “digging around for old manuscripts about the history and magazine.com/donate/special-gifts/ledecky.

26 September - October 2017 Photograph by Stu Rosner

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Last fall, my mom and I drove my furni- I’m a little bit scared, but also intrigued by This summer hasn’t been too bad. I bit ture up to Boston from Pittsburgh, my home- how I can return to so familiar a place with the bullet and went on some coffee dates. town. We picked up my friend in Philadel- so many familiar faces and find it uncanny, Some of these meet-ups were dull, others phia on the way, and the two of them chatted haunted by the lack of my friend’s familiar were exciting, others comfortable. A few happily while I drove the last eight hours up presence. He’s not the only one gone: most are starting to look like friendships, to to Cambridge. He helped us get my furniture of us upperclassmen will be missing crucial accumulate long strings of text messages up the stairs of my three-story walk-up, and companions. This is the way of college—an and rituals and terminologies and songs we then, after my mom set off on the long drive endless rotation of new people in and old both like and books we’ve told each other back, he and I posted up at an outdoor ta- people out. It’s not as if they leave and Har- to read. None of them are durable yet or ble at Shay’s on JFK Street to spend the rest vard is the same old place for the rest of us. especially close, but I feel surrounded by a of the afternoon talking about each other’s We will melt down the remnants of our lives new set of companions, all of whom I want summers, parent-free. It felt like there was here and recast them around the routines of to be around, to share this city with, if not so much time to account for. That evening the friends who will take their places. to know. We’re all in the same boat, turn- my apartment felt too new and too empty, so ing to each other for familiarity and routine he came over and broke in the stove making out here in a newer and realer world. For us empanadas. the past three years, none of these people This year I will get off the plane at Logan seemed to fit into my life at Harvard, nor and put myself first on the Silver Line and I into theirs, but maybe by the end of the then on the Red Line. My mom will meet me summer we’ll be familiar enough to make at my old apartment, days before my lease space for each other. ends, and the two of us will lug my furniture That older acquaintance’s comments down those same three flights and drive it made me feel pressure to preemptively fill to my new place. I’m sure she’ll come to in the gap awaiting me after Harvard, and Shay’s with me afterwards if I want, but to pave over any improbable loneliness I eventually she’ll drive away, and I’ll be might feel while still at college. It’s easy, poised, all alone, at the start of my last faced with this kind of rhetoric, to concep- year of college. tualize friendships as achievements, pos-

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Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746