On Housing Day my sophomore year, as I walked into Eliot Dining Hall for an enhanced dinner, I was greeted with the smells of lobster ravioli and fresh apple crisp and the excited energy of new and old Eliotites mingling for the first time. Little did I know that this space in my new House would become one of the places I miss the most while abroad two years later. Three semesters of early breakfasts, late-night conversations, and countless meals in between transformed a mere dining hall into a second home. The hours I’ve spent in the space have allowed me to form meaningful friendships and become part of an amazing community. I have never walked through without waving hello to at least one person. I know Eliot Dining Hall, and in it, I am known.
What I long for isn’t just the dining hall itself, but the feeling of belonging that came with it—familiarity that’s hard to come by. The irony, of course, is that familiarity is both the most comforting thing to have and the hardest thing to acquire, especially while abroad. It isn’t something you buy; it’s something you invest in, with time as your only currency. As I consider how to spend my months in Paris, I’ve discovered an internal tension between my competing desire for familiarity and novelty. How do I balance time between seeking the comfort of familiarity with the adventure and time-slowing properties of novelty?
It is only through repetition that we can become familiar with a place. Comfort isn’t something you can buy. A café won’t accept an upfront payment of €50 to make you a regular. Instead, that money must be divided into twenty-five €2 espressos. It takes a few visits for a barista to know your name and order or for another regular to nod at you.
If the key to familiarity is repetition, then the key to repetition is consistency. For better or worse, prolonged consistency has never been a hallmark of my schedule. Back on campus, weeks oscillate between heavy and light workloads, and a plethora of different experiences disrupt any chance of monotony. Even last summer, when I worked a 9-5—a stereotypically “routine” lifestyle—I still felt that the adventures I sprinkled in each week sufficiently shook things up.
Coming to Paris, I thought that my schedule would be more consistent than at Harvard while still including moments for new adventures. With fewer class hours and less homework, I imagined myself settling into a steady routine, embedding myself into small city subcultures, and easily becoming a regular at the nearest corner café. In some ways, this has been true. But in hindsight, my time here has been anything but routine. The past two months have been the most novelty-filled (read: inconsistent) of my life. Each week brings a new café, a new corner of Paris, or even a new country. With so many new experiences, I feel like I’ve lived here for much longer than merely ten weeks.
This brings me back to my question: how do I balance the search for familiarity with my love of novelty? Take my choice of cafés, for example. Although my love for espresso may be infinite, the amount of time I have to spend sitting in cafés, unfortunately, is not. After switching host families to be closer to class a few weeks into my stay, I discovered a delightful café just a ten-minute walk from my new home. With its perfectly creamy macchiato and spacious, sun-filled interior, the Dancing Goat quickly became my new favorite café in the city. Determined to become a regular, I’ve made a conscious effort over the past few weeks to visit weekly and spend some time drawing, journaling, or just pondering in their computer-free space. I recognize at least one other regular and the baristas—though I’m not sure they recognize me yet. Familiarity is close.
But the Dancing Goat isn’t on my daily commute. Each visit requires a conscious effort, a small act of resistance against my pull of regularity. Often when I decide to go, I wonder: should I try somewhere new in my neighborhood instead? Would the novelty of a different café outweigh the growing comfort of my usual spot? Do café visits have diminishing marginal returns? Certainly not when you consider the benefits of commitment—becoming a regular, building relationships, and finding familiarity. Commitment yields dividends far greater than the fleeting high of newness.
And still, a voice in my head urges me to explore more, to maximize originality. If time is limited, I should try to see as much of Paris as I can before returning to places I already know. In these moments of doubt, it’s clear that novelty is something I value. From a strictly utilitarian perspective, this makes sense. Studies show that novelty changes our perception of time, boosts neuroplasticity, and enhances overall life satisfaction. Who wouldn’t want all those benefits? But perhaps I’ve been thinking about this all wrong, which raises a new question: can familiarity still feel new?
The answer is yes—if you let it. Faithful readers know I joined a run club when I first arrived in Paris, and I’m pleased to report that it’s become a regular part of my week. Thankfully, this familiarity hasn’t come at the cost of novelty. Each week, we run a new route and meet new members. Many rituals, like a run club, can be modified to include new experiences. A weekly lunch can move to a different spot, a daily coffee order can be switched once a week, and a morning commute can take the scenic route now and then.
Yet even when familiarity exists without freshness, it still deserves to be valued for its own sake. As much as I love the thrill of each week here looking different, I’ve come to cherish the parts of my life that look the same week after week—like my art class and daily dinners with my host family. Not every experience needs to be the best or the newest to add value and bring joy. Sometimes, the real reward comes from commitment. I’m certainly happier having spent so much time in the Eliot Dining Hall instead of hopping from one dining hall to the next in search of something different.
At the end of this reflection, I still don’t have a perfect mix for balancing novelty and familiarity. They both have their place and can coexist. In Paris, as in life, we all have to decide how to spend time in a way that aligns with our values. At different times, the ideal balance can shift, so we must be in tune with ourselves to know how to adjust. As I look forward to the next two months in Paris, I plan to index more towards familiarity. I want to establish stronger links to the city and the people that I’ve met here. I’ll still find time for novelty (my Paris Bucket List will make sure of that), but I’ll be mindful not to chase it at the expense of the beauty of being known.
Frances Connors ’26 (maryfrancesconnors@college.harvard.edu) is excited to become a true regular in a Parisian café.