After what seems to be a never ending first half of the spring semester, it is finally the long awaited week before spring break here at Harvard. If you’re a first-year student, you have likely already come to face many battles this far in your Harvard journey. After claiming that you were going to stage the academic comeback of the century over winter break, you’ve probably come back to campus, failed to “lock in,” and experienced your fair share of crashouts by this point in the semester.
As first-years, we are all bonded by the valiant attempt to conquer the monster that is the expository writing requirement. There is nothing more taxing than spending countless hours completing readings that you simply can’t convince yourself are entertaining (if you even attempted them) just to receive a tragic A- on your paper. For my fellow Life Sciences 1B students (“LS1B-ers”) who were utterly humbled by the first PIE, a Periodic Individual Evaluations (not the sweet treat), let’s hope the second one goes better this week. But, let’s face it, poor PIE grades are a canon event in this weed-out class.
Surpassing even the most insufferably miserable pre-meds, perhaps none have it worse than Government concentrators at the moment. I sincerely hope that this Buzzfeed-esque news article is a lighthearted relief from the host of Apple News articles you read first thing every morning that are slowly extinguishing your hope for the future. Maybe the only students doing well at the moment are those preparing for their 30 question multiple choice midterm exam in Economics 10a (sorry, not sorry).
Academics aside, in the past month, most first-years can unanimously agree that the biggest battle we have all come to face is the infamously messy setup of the sophomore housing lottery: blocking groups. If your fall semester friend group survived this obstacle, congrats—you’ve won the social lottery! Others…have not been quite so fortunate. We are slowly creeping up on Housing Day, one of the few occasions we have to claim that we have social lives as undergraduates of a socially dead liberal arts college. As a customary tradition of the Harvard College experience, there is one last “challenge” which stands between us and unlocking sophomore life: the River Run.
Here’s the objective of this chaotic superstition. It is widely believed that if you take a shot at each of the nine upperclassmen river houses the night before Housing Day, you will be spared the tragedy of ending up in the Quad—gasp! It is important to note here that the Quad consists of a set of suburban mansions whose biggest flaw is that they are an inconvenient 15-minute walk from Harvard Square (cough…cough…first world problem). Regardless, we Harvard students have to find fun where we can. In the spirit of this tradition and intellectual vitality, I have created the following flowchart to tell you which house you actually belong in. The very serious conditions of said flowchart are the following:
Answer the questions honestly. Don’t try to convince yourself you belong in a river house if you clearly belong in the Quad. After all, our school motto is “Veritas,” so it is essentially part of your student contract with John Harvard himself to remain truthful. Once you get your results, read the hyper-specific descriptions below.
P.S. respective Hogwarts House affiliations are included for those who find it amusing.
“The Life of The Party” Houses: Adams, Quincy, Lowell aka Gryffindor.
According to your answers, I think you lowkey wish you went to a state school for the social scene but you are making the best with what you’ve got. Your social self belongs in the heart of campus—enjoy!
Work Hard, Play Harder Houses: Kirkland, Dunster, Mather aka Ravenclaw.
I’m proud of you for prioritizing being a real person, but you are definitely a Harvard student first. Respectfully, you’ve got your shit together. You should be in a house where you have separation between academics, social life, and maintaining a somewhat reasonable sleep schedule so you can keep up with your five class schedule and 20 on-campus commitments.
Old Money Houses: Winthrop, Eliot, Leverett aka Slytherin.
You exist to romanticize your liberal arts college experience and I am here for it! You worked hard to get here, but your creatively written Common App essay worked harder. Keep rocking that trench coat and drinking your $8 coffee from Blue Bottle, you dark academia queens.
Suburban Fantasy Houses: Cabot, Currier, Pforzheimer aka Hufflepuff.
You may be a homebody and shamelessly spend your Friday nights in Lamont Cafe until it closes at ten, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! You have an old soul fit for the grandmotherly house vibes of the quad. A haven of endless quintessential small businesses and adorable families away from the hustle culture of the College awaits.
Megan Legault ’28 (mlegault@college.harvard.edu), Buzzfeed obsessed pre-teen turned writer for the Harvard Independent states clearly, for legal reasons, that this quiz is based solely on her (completely correct) opinions of the houses she formulated from Reddit threads.