If the Shoe Fits

Alex puts Harvard's lessons to work in the real world

By Rucker Alex

Special to the Gazette

I decided in August to take a year off from college to read and help my mother start a new business. The leave of absence after sophomore year creates a pleasant symmetry: I've spent two years at school, so I am familiar with Harvard. I take a year in the "real world" to mull over what I've done and what I want to do, both short- and long-term. Then I go back for my last two years to take advantage of what I miss most about college. This year away allows me to see how and why I changed during my first half of Harvard.

Since second grade, I have conceived of college as a time when I could lock myself up in a library to read and think. However, in the fall of my freshman year I became entranced with the tangible, direct results from my extracurriculars: I help to plan a conference, and the conference happens. I pull my hardest for crew, and our boat crosses the finish line first. Essays by famous alums that I have read report that they, too, felt drawn to extracurriculars.

Like many Harvard students, I had been very socially and politically active in high school. My college activities -- freshman year crew, the Institute of Politics (IOP), and the Women's Leadership Project (WLP) -- held my interest and upped the ante. I was hooked on every minute. The lessons came hard and fast, allowing reflection time only during a walk to the boathouse for 6 a.m. practice or while waiting for a meeting to begin. Crew taught me a sense of responsibility to myself and my teammates. The physical pain reinforced that life is not always easy, that when things are most torturous it is important to sit up straight and pull hard, and seeing the finish line is only a reason to exert more effort. The IOP and WLP reminded me of the importance of always putting my best foot forward, of being acutely sensitive to others in a room, and of learning to ask people interesting questions not for the sake of filling dead air, but because their stories make me richer. I also appropriated enormous amounts of savvy, personality, and thoughtfulness from working closely with my peers.

I really had two different kinds of academic experiences in addition to my extracurricular learning opportunities. The first kind is practical. In my sophomore year, thinking I was concentrating in science, I took an introduction to chemistry course. In a purely academic sense, it was a miserable failure. However, I learned that in order to work through a problem of any magnitude, I need to start at square one; in order to approach a solution, I have to break down the problem into its components and take baby steps.

The second kind of academic experience is not as practical, but just as important. My favorite example of its benefits occurred after taking Professor Helen Vendler's Core poetry course. It was a spring morning in my freshman year, after exams but before move-out. I was lying in my bed, in a dreamy state of semi-consciousness, listening to a National Public Radio report ended with some unattributed lines from Stephen Spender's poem, "I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great." Not only could I name the author and title, but the first and last lines zipped through my head like a neon laser show, and I was instantly able to fuse the context of the story with my knowledge of the poem.

The total sum of academic and extracurricular lessons lends confidence and preparation to my "real world" business experience. My mother, Barbara Thornton, graduated from Harvard Business School in 1995, in the same month I graduated from high school. On Aug. 1, 1997, she opened a store, inVestments Fine Fashion Shoes, on Newbury Street in Boston. We specialize in women's designer shoes in larger sizes; there are only a handful of boutique stores like it in the country. For the first few months, I concentrated on marketing, public relations, administration, and retail. Midway through the fall, I designed a Website for the store, which is now 65 pages and generates constant activity.

I can now see how my Harvard experience contributes to "real world" business skill and ability. I find that the business requires an extraordinary amount of discipline, patience, intelligence, and determination. What strikes me as delightful is the manageability of the enterprise; most everything can be done as long as it is broken into "baby steps" and approached with gusto. My social ease allows me to chat with customers, keep sales representatives invested in our welfare, encourage other stores to refer women to us, and secure a job at a shoe manufacturing plant in Spain. My obsession for administrative structure, honed at the IOP and WLP, keeps the files in order, customer database running, and inventory flowing. Crises are handled with a deep breath and a clear head. My extracurriculars were good simulations for the real.

I spent my first two years heavily involved in extracurricular activities, and I do not regret a minute of the challenge. I thrive on "doing." In a year on leave from school when I could have done nothing, I happily chose to stay the course of action. However, on my return in September for my last two years as an undergraduate, I intend to focus more on academics. I can't expect to learn a lifetime's worth of knowledge in four years; after all, that's what lifetimes are for. Instead, though, I want to build a foundation of knowledge that supports and enriches my future life experience.

Organizing and managing are activities I can and want to do for the next 60 years; but when else will I have two years of such unrestricted intellectual freedom taking place within a structured academic atmosphere? It's not that you don't learn valuable lessons from extracurriculars, but they don't come without cost. I honestly miss intellectual stimulation this year. I've enjoyed the 30-odd books I've read, but long for the discussion. I feel that although I'm plenty busy, I'm running close to empty on intellectual substance, and that is what will heighten appreciation for and propel me through whatever post-grad life I choose to lead.