Lately it seems as though I’ve become prey to tourists asking for direction. I don’t know what it is about me that leads them to swarm and attack with buzzing questions like “Where can we find the museum of natural history?” and “What’s that building over there with the huge stairs and pillars? Do you happen to know when it was built?” I understand that whenever Harvard’s campus isn’t covered in icicles the tourists take it as an invitation to invade but COME ON. I’m not a walking information center, the real is in the Holyoke center. Au Bon Pain marks the spot people!

Today I had to explain where it can be found to a deaf couple for whom I had to draw a detailed map and pantomime the directions. My favorite tourist encounter was with an elderly woman who streamlined toward me as I was passing out the March issue of the Voice. She wanted to know how to get to Memorial Church but proceeded to interrogate me about dorms, dining plans, tuition costs, my social life, and even the profile of Harvard’s minority population. Seriously. At some point I kindly gave her the tip to go and Google what she wanted to know because, frankly, the internet knows more about this school than I do.

To think that this weekend I am going to be prone to these kinds of attacks by a clueless hoard of a thousand admitted students except they will want to know where the party is and not how to find the nearest bathroom. My prefrosh won’t know what she got herself into when I hand her a map and give her a pat on the back to send her on her way because I ain’t dealing with it no more.

Is it just me, or was J-term a complete waste of time for most of you?

When Harvard first announced that it had changed its calendar to make room for a month-long winter break, I rejoiced. A whole month? Of doing like, nothing? That’s heaven. No longer would we envy our friends at state schools and other schools who had a nice three weeks of winter vacay because we got a whopping four and a half.

J-term, at least for me, promised to be a time of uber productivity, filled with internship applications, course shopping, career pondering, book reading (for pleasure), on top of seeing friends and family. Did it prove to be productive? Not really. This graph painfully but accurately describes my month of January:

So what was the problem? One solution that I put forth in my 500-word-ish-long spiel in the survey was obviously to provide students with more options for staying on campus during J-term. I mean, as much as I love my family, staying with them for 4.5 weeks is just begging for someone’s blood pressure to skyrocket. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy frolicking about in a kind of empty campus? Spending J-term on campus with more student-led programming or offering quirky not-for-credit classes would be a fantastic option for students. See MIT’s Independent Activities Period, which is a program that has been successfully running for four decades! MIT students are given the option to take either for-credit or not-for-credit activities during the month of January. You can take a “Art and Architecture Tour of the Boston Public Library” or attend the “32nd Annual Science Fiction Marathon” or take an introductory language course in Japanese. Such diverse programming without the pressure of grades or credit would give students a truly relaxing yet intellectually stimulating winter break. It would definitely be a nice change from the unfortunate amounts of Hulu and junk food I consumed over J-term.

What do you think? Was J-term fruitful for you? What suggestions do you have?