Blooming With Time

April 2026

A week after Harvard College’s 2026 admitted students weekend in April, dubbed “Visitas,” I found myself at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts’ “Art in Bloom” exhibition. Flower arrangements were displayed throughout the museum, mimicking the curated pieces displayed in each room. The artistry in the flowers reflected that of the paintings, sculptures, and assortment of artwork: the textures and pops of color—all the way down to the vase—each bouquet a careful selection made by MFA volunteers and New England garden clubs.

***

The MFA’s pairing of typical museum artifacts with freshly arranged flowers comes only once a year, during April, and it found me at the end of my freshman year. As I made my way through the museum, admiring each uniquely assembled arrangement, I could not help but think about my own bouquet of first-year experiences that have made Harvard more like home.

***

April 2025

As the lights dim in the Bright-Landry Hockey Center and the crowd around us is bathed in purple light, music fills the silent air, and the audience of undergraduates begins to cheer. Student models strut down the runway positioned at the heart of the arena: fur jackets, bedazzled tops, stiletto boots galore. All of a sudden, they start dancing, perfectly synchronized as the beats direct them through each move. I am in awe as my Visitas host points out dancers they are close friends with and classmates they’ve spent hours with in Lamont Library. We dance in the pit with the crowd, a moment of shared human joy with strangers I’ve never met before.

***

I began my Visitas weekend at Harvard’s largest student-run fashion and dance performance, known as “Eleganza”—my first impression of Harvard. It was something so at odds with my perception of life here on campus. I had been told that students were always studying, locked in 24-hour libraries I felt I was supposed to know by name. Having heard of the lack of social life and noting the obvious absence of Greek culture, I had little hope for a student body that had the capacity to have fun.

Now I know that Harvard is nothing if not a balance of hard work and joyful occasions. My first year has been filled with nothing but a vibrant group of people with stories I could never have conjured myself. Just as much as I have learned about Spanish conjugation and European history in my classes, I have also discovered so much about who I want to be and what I want to do from the people I have met this year. 

***

October 2025

“I’m planning on concentrating in Government and Economics,” I confidently tell my professor during office hours. I’m sitting in an armchair opposite him while I ask for class recommendations in the Government department. He lists some courses, including some of his own, before asking me why I’ve chosen Government. I give him the story I’ve recycled many times over—that I like policy because that’s what I understand, what I’m good at. It felt natural to choose a concentration that so explicitly focused on my skills, with Economics for practicality. 

As I’ve exhausted all my questions, I go to leave, grabbing my newly thrifted handbag from the chair next to me, but my professor leaves me with a parting anecdote: “Don’t be so sure. Take the time to explore.”

***

Since that office hours session in my first semester, I’ve found myself oscillating between Government, Sociology, and Social Studies—a Harvard rite of passage for potential Government and Economics concentrators, I know. Looking back now that the spring semester is almost over, I wish that I had heeded my professor’s advice and taken a class outside of the sphere of my intended concentration. There are so many classes here that are so worth taking, each offering something new to consider. I’ve realized now that I should deviate from the path I’ve set out for myself more often.

***

September 2025

Rǝhus Hāduš Āmat! I read the text my mom sent me on this bright, sunny September afternoon. It is the Eritrean New Year, my first one away from home. I don my favorite pink zuria, embroidered with zigzags of golden thread, and walk over to the Lowell Junior Common Room. Immediately, I am greeted with the smells of home: sweet himbasha freshly baked, pan-fried beef with onions, and spicy red stews made to stain cream-white zurias. Guayla music plays in the background, and it feels as if I am in the kitchen with my mother, sitting on a woven rattan stool while I watch her cook.

***

I have found so much comfort in the Eritrean and Ethiopian, or Habesha, community on campus. I was one of the few Eritreans in my hometown outside Chicago, and while there was a big Habesha diaspora in the city, my family was often too busy to make the drive up to the North Side for weekly gatherings. It had never crossed my mind that I might find my cultural community in college, always having been lumped into larger affinity groups. Their stories and skin tones mirrored mine, but they were never quite the same. 

It is a lovely thing to walk around campus and see features that resemble mine, knowing that their experiences are ones I can relate to. More than that, I’ve found friends who share similar cultural traditions, celebrate the same holidays, and understand the comfort of shiro on a cold, rainy day. 

***

March 2026

BANG, BANG, BANG. The moment we’ve been waiting for is here—Harvard College Housing Day. I can hear upperclassmen’s voices on the other side as my future roommate and I reach for our dorm door. Our other roommates anxiously wait nearby, phones up, ready to catch our reactions. Together, we turn the knob, and we are swarmed by a sea of red and black—Matherites with signs and bright yellow blow-up bananas. We scream with them, their excitement contagious as we look ahead to our next three years in this new home.

Moments later, leaving our room for the Yard to celebrate with peers, we pass rooming groups whose feelings about their new House are written all over their faces. We find friends rejoicing as they sport the green bunny ears and big smiles of Leverett House. Others shed tears after they heard “C-A-B-O-T. You just won the lottery.” Bubbles float through the air, and students from each House chant as they fight to be heard over each other. I want to stay in this moment of pure chaos and undergraduate camaraderie.

***

Harvard traditions are moments I know to cherish, moments unique to my time here. I love the way they bring everyone together, uniting us for a moment in the midst of our overwhelming Google Calendars and commitments. Sometimes it feels as though Harvard is a pre-professional bubble that avoids the stereotypical college experience at all costs. But moments like Housing Day, River Run, and Harvard-Yale bring back that sense of whimsy that you might find at a state school, reinjecting the student body with a sense of all-encompassing joy. 

***

This year, I went back to Eleganza, now with my roommate and the prospective freshman I was hosting for Visitas. As I walked into Bright-Landry, the purple lights washing again, I ran into my hosts from last year, and it felt like no time had passed. But once I sat down, I realized everything was different. I was the one introducing the incoming undergraduate to my friends, pointing out the dancers I knew, and answering her questions—a true full circle ending to my first year.

All of these experiences—these moments that have shaped me and my freshman year—are purely out of luck. My decision to attend Visitas came out of sheer curiosity about what Harvard was like. In fact, I vividly remember stepping onto campus with no intention of attending: I won’t be ending up here. And oh, how that has changed. How lucky I am that it did.

Miriam Tsegay ’29 (miriamtsegay@college.harvard.edu) is so glad she chose Harvard.