College admission reaction videos never fail to make me cry. When I was applying to college, I would watch them surreptitiously in the dark of my bedroom, as if pressing repeat on the shaky glow of my phone screen would will my own acceptance into existence. Even now, it’s cliché, but I find them cathartic—in 15 viral seconds, capturing an authentic moment of critical, captivating release in which someone opens an email, an audience of three or four breaks into sobs, and everything falls into place.
Of course, that’s not really what happens.
For one, many reaction videos are faked, either entirely contrived, or played up and dramatized for viral likes. But perhaps more importantly, what they symbolize—this moment of final release, the happily-ever-after at the end of a well-fought journey—is an illusion. Though arguably an issue and irony of its own, the pride and relief of admissions is real. But there’s also something else. When I recall my own moment of acceptance, I remember a joyful burst, muddied by a sinister confusion: where do I go from here?
It’s the question that ultimately casts a shadow over many students who fight through high-pressure pre-college environments to secure coveted spots in the Ivy League. Eighteen carefully curated years dedicated to the admissions of highly regarded institutions often falsely prepares us for what we believe is the pinnacle of success. It isn’t until we arrive that we realize the journey does not end with admission. And that is when the panic sets in.
Last week, I spoke with Bill Deresiewicz, author of hundreds of essays about elite education, including Excellent Sheep: the Miseducation of America’s Elite, and most recently, The End of Solitude, a series of essays on the death of alone time in society. I told him about the sense of drift I’ve seen in my peers and myself. A common refrain among my friends is that they dread being alone. Another is that they feel like they can never slow down.
“It’s like you don’t know who you are,” Deresiewicz said. “You don’t feel yourself, in a way. And that’s because you’ve always been doing the hoop-jumping thing. You’ve always been responding to other people’s demands, and you haven’t had the chance to develop any rich inner life.”
From high school and earlier, the pressures of elite admission and social media—two sides of the same warped mirror—trap students in a cycle of constantly seeking validation, never slowing down.
Abby Fennelly ’24 described the constant pressure she feels to fill up her time. “It seems like every interaction I have with a peer begins with a ‘how are you?’ ‘Good. Busy! Busy, but good. How are you?’ Or ‘Tired. I barely slept last night. But alright,’” she explained. “It’s a brag masked as a complaint, and I find myself doing it, too. More even, expressing that you have free time seems like a guilty admission.”
High school taught me that the price of busyness is exhaustion and stress, yet I have always justified that busyness with the value it adds to my life. Fennelly implied as much, explaining it is hard not to fill your calendar at Harvard when there are so many “once in a lifetime” opportunities available to students. But what happens when you are so busy you don’t have time to really experience anything—even the things you love? The price of being busy isn’t just exhaustion: perhaps it’s a loss of meaning, too.
“You’re simply too busy,” Deresiewicz said. “You’re simply too busy accumulating credentials, in the same way that you’re too busy to engage on a deep intellectual level with your coursework because you just don’t have time, you’re also too busy to engage on a deep emotional, social level with your friends.”
Of course, some people thrive being busy. Robert Lawrence ’25 said he sees two paths at Harvard: either students “put their heads back down and keep jumping through the hoops, or they really become ungrounded by it. If it’s a spectrum, I definitely find myself on the latter side of it.”
Indeed, the problem is that eventually, most of us slow down. (Sometimes, a pandemic forces us to.) And in those moments, things come apart.
A 1963 Crimson article identifies this critical moment as the “sophomore slump.” “Throughout high school the student was probably under constant pressure to get into a good college,” wrote Andrew Beyer ’65. “In freshman year he was preoccupied with surviving at Harvard. But in the sophomore year there is usually no ‘next step’ to serve as a motivation—graduate school, three years away, is still remote. With his two most familiar impetuses removed—error and a concern for the future—the sophomore is frequently struck with an overpowering apathy toward his academic work.”
With the added variable of social media, and the continual decline of admission rates, the problem has only gotten worse since 1963. Lawrence explained that the urge to exist outside of conventional academic and professional tracks leaves him with a sense of “restlessness and uncertainty.” Fennelly said she has felt apathetic towards her work at Harvard, her relationship between school and life “tenuous at best.” When the sophomore slump sets in, whenever it does, so does the ungroundedness we never had a reason to feel before. Ungroundedness leads to apathy or burnout—and ultimately, loneliness.
A 2020 study conducted by healthcare company Cigna found that more than 79 percent of young adults ranging from 10 to 25 years old reported feelings of loneliness, an eight percentage point increase from two years before. Accelerated by the pandemic, college campuses around the country are experiencing a worsening mental health crisis, with nearly three quarters of college students reported experiencing some mental health crisis at school, and almost a third of college students reporting having felt so depressed that they “had trouble functioning.”
“Being part of a herd is very different than being part of a community,” Deresiewicz explained. At Harvard, we are surrounded by each other. Our Google Calendars are rainbow-blocked. Our communal living spaces are, well, communal. We hate being alone. And yet, whether we talk about it or not, Harvard can be a lonely place.
Deresiewicz says there may not be systemic solutions. Students feel little support from the network of resources designed to help them—it takes months to schedule an appointment with Counseling and Mental Health Services, and Lawrence said the advising and career systems at Harvard “do a poor job of acknowledging this is a reality that a lot of their students face.”
But Deresiewicz emphasized that “individuals have the capacity to conduct their lives differently.” He urges students to find opportunities for true privacy, which he says is key to developing a “rich inner life.”
Fennelly said she has found solace in her moments away from Harvard. During the pandemic, she took a year off and spent seven months away from her computer. “That changed everything,” she said, explaining she was able to deeply consider what was important to her and return to school with a more “positive relationship with life.”
“For me it comes back to the idea that life is meant to be joyful and that you must do things that bring joy into your life.” Fennelly acknowledges that taking time off is a privilege that not all students have. Many people pursue pre-professional tracks because they don’t have the security to go elsewhere. “Being able to choose joy is a privilege,” she explained.
“I don’t have a ‘plan’ per se, I’m not following any specific path, and I don’t have an answer when people ask me what I’m going to do when I graduate or what I’m going to do with my degree. But I’m much happier than I was before.”
Proof Schubert Reed ’25 (proofschubertreed@college.harvard.edu) edits Arts for the Indy.