THE UNDERGRADUATE gans to which the room had borne witness. Sophomore year, I lived in a shiny one-room double in newly renovated Dunster House: two desks, two dress- by lily scherlis ’18 ers, two beds. Ten square feet of Mise en Scène open floor space. It was pristine, but it was also sterile. I felt like I professor once advised me that tion: I could relocate to another city was living in a hotel or a hospital. I shouldn’t have possessions un- at the drop of a hat. At this stage of our You get used to being stared at til I have tenure. “Then,” he said, lives, we should always be ready to move, by the tour groups in the Yard, “you can start to collect books.” I am told, and since I moved to boarding but when you live in a space that AI’ve given away so many of my books over school at age 14 I’ve used mobility as the exists as a model for donors you start to feel the years. The Harvard Advocate’s library gets cornerstone of my identity as an indepen- like a part of the furniture. You have a bed replenished every spring because students dent young thing. for sleeping and a dining hall for eating and a don’t want to pay to store their labored-over Letting go of this freedom has been an shower for getting clean. The space in which coursebooks. This year, to fill my five-tier adventure in commitment; I am beginning you dwell was built to satisfy, and to do so Ikea bookshelf, I rented a Zipcar and drove to come around to the idea of having things. with minimal effort on your part. It’s not about four dozen of my old, carefully anno- That antique desk still has a ghost-shaped spartan: Dunster has televisions and squash tated, paperbacks from the Advocate back to eraser where a drawer pull should be: my courts and pool tables and a grille—all the my new off-campus apartment. first clear memory is of screwing that eraser things we are supposed to require in order Once you have your own space, populat- on circa 1998. I bought myself the succulent to relax. But the squash courts have big win- ing it becomes an extracurricular. My moth- on my desk after a break-up. Possessions dows and the pool tables are right in the er and I drove my antique childhood desk up function as receptacles for meaning and entrance. “Look,” Harvard says, “we are to Cambridge from my home in Pittsburgh recipients of my impulse to take care giving our students wholesome lives.” in anticipation of the four empty rooms I of something. All the more to leave Somehow using these supposedly would need to fill with things. Later, my behind when I do go. “fun” additions feels like yet another friend and I rented a truck and drove to Before this move, I spent five stage for performance. Now north Medford to pick up an $80 Craigslist years with the same ubiq- we are demonstrating how couch, whose previous owner dropped ra- uitous dorm furniture. I relaxed we can be while still cial slurs with impressive density; while I had five different desks, achieving at such a high pulled the car around he asked my friend five differ- level. Suddenly the criteria to scrub his bathtub. I still don’t think of ent dressers, of satisfaction feel like a set of the things I acquired from Craigslist adven- five different checkboxes on some adminis- tures—coffee tables, dressers, lamps, arm- bed frames and mattresses, trator’s list of things a consult- chairs—as mine for the long haul. all probably manufactured in ing group has decided we need. This Up until this fall, everything I owned the same factory. By the last iteration I had brain-in-a-jar lifestyle aligns with Harvard’s had to go into boxes once a year. My pos- a system for what went in each of my four ethos of packed schedules and intellectu- sessions were limited to things that could desk drawers. I knew just how to layer my al maturation. It makes room for the good be compacted to fit into a 24-inch cube. This various mattress pads for optimum comfort stuff by eliminating the time-suck involved rhythm comes with a sense of on an XL twin. Other people are sleeping on in taking care of a space. But after five years anticipa- each of those mattresses now and keeping of boarding school and college dorm life, I felt their underwear in my old under- like a catatonia patient on an IV drip of food wear drawers. Dorm rooms were and gym machines and single-ply toilet paper. wiped clean of history at the end of each year, though the barely This year, as a junior, I live in a three-story visible stains of previous lives re- cube behind Peabody Terrace. It isn’t New fused to entirely come out of their Dunster: recently a mouse crawled into a box carpets. We were always trying to of my winter clothing and died there. The transcend this transience, this ma- walls are cracked in places and bored with terial ubiquity: at boarding school the holes screws left behind. But we have a we would Sharpie notes to fu- living room, a kitchen, and a library, each ture denizens into the drawers with austere large-paned windows that cast of our desks: words of encour- quadrangles of cold sunlight over the grey agement for when the work walls. I sit on my bed as I wake up and feel got too hard and the weather like the pensive woman in pink in Hopper’s too cold, or anecdotes of past shenani- Morning Sun. Out my bedroom window is the Illustrations by Cindy Salans Rosenheim Harvard Magazine 31 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 JOHN HARVARD'S JOURNAL neighborhood: yards and parking lots and want my apartment to be we inherited from the previ- garages spill into one another. I don’t have a the kind of neutral so- ous tenants and the white- view of the river, but I can see the Peabody cial space that Harvard washed wood one borrowed Terrace playground with its newfangled knows it can’t provide. from the Advocate building), jungle gym, and to its left, the Blackstone The spaces that aren’t so whoever was left sat on Steam Plant’s brick industrial mass. There’s heavily administered by a towel on the cinder block. a community garden next door where the the University itself be- We watched the steam from the sunflowers grew above my head. long to all manner of small- Blackstone smokestacks join the A 2015 Crimson op-ed claims that only 2 per- er institutions, each with its clouds for hours. Friends floated cent of students, or about 120 people, move own reputation and code of in and out throughout each eve- off campus. It’s a motley crew—students who social behavior. Don’t get me ning, and we joked about rigging have taken extensive time off, married under- wrong: I have deep affection up a sensor to my door that would grads, the rare fraternity brothers who choose for the buildings of my own play a bass riff every time someone en- to live in their frat house, people with special organizations. They’re a rare tered the apartment, like on Seinfeld. “I medical requirements. Harvard’s admissions privilege unavailable to un- feel like this is the set for the sitcom website refers to undergraduates who have dergraduates at any other of our lives,” my friend said. This is been “granted permission” to live off campus college. They provided a com- what I want: to provide the mise en as if it’s a big privilege, but I just checked a fortable communal space dur- scène, but not be its only protagonist. box on an online form. ing my two years in College hous- Our speech habits say it all. “I’m going It was surprisingly easy to extricate ing. But I hope I can give my friends a spot that back to my room,” I would say for those myself from typical undergrad life. Most stands outside of Harvard’s dense network of years I lived on campus. Or, “I’m going back students don’t even consider doing so, formal affiliation and social regulation. to Dunster.” I don’t say this anymore. In the and those who do are generally put off by On our free evenings during the dining- daytime I spend long hours reading in the perceived obstacles that I don’t think are hall workers’ strike in October, my friends Advocate building. I camp out with my work grounded in reality. The general conception came over for dinner; we made our signature on the patio of the Carpenter Center and go is that apartments are only for the really rich grilled cheese with Colby jack and spicy to- to class on the third floor of Barker. I hang kids (though my living expenses for a full matoes and onions. They came off the skillet around the Lampoon in the evening, and 12 months of the year will be exactly $1,400 one by one, so we ate in turns. Later we re- then at the end of the night I go home. more than what Harvard charges for seven tired to the fire escape with a couple of beers months).