<p>How do guys manage to get A’s in such an extremely rigorous demanding environment all the time? How do you keep up with everything? What strategies do you guys use?</p>
<p>I’m the parent of a H student and what I have observed in her and her friends is a combination of talent, hard work, and good time management skills.</p>
<p>Genius and talent. And absolute and complete dedication to the task at hand. The few kids I know who’ve gone to Harvard have been unparalleled both intellectually as well as socially - these kids are kind-hearted, driven, and powerfully charismatic.</p>
<p>Do what you love doing and you’ll naturally be good at it.</p>
<p>[I</a> Am Fine | FM | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/17/harvard-many-feel-out/]I”>The Harvard Crimson)</p>
<p>Although hundreds of Harvard students are talented, work hard and have good time management skills, many others struggle in such a rigorous and demanding environment. Last February, the Harvard Crimson published the above article – which I thought was very brave of them – to open up lines of communication. The outpouring of comments, not only from Harvard students, but from students across the country, is very telling. As I’ve said to my kids: Happiness is the key to success in life, not grades.</p>
<p>I’m quite happy here, but:</p>
<p>-I went to UHS earlier this week because I had a fever. I’d also gotten like 3 hours of sleep the night before…but my fever had actually disappeared by the time I got there, and there was a discussion class that I just could not, feeling incredibly sick and tired, get through that afternoon. I started crying at the thought that they might not give me a note to get out of class. They did give me the note and then I went and slept for 12 of the next 16 hours and woke up feeling much better. But when I went in there and was not completely tear-free, the UHS staff was ON IT. About three of them asked if I had had thoughts of harming myself that day (very no), another was convinced that I was chronically sleep-deprived (no) and was shocked when I eventually revealed that “I get plenty of sleep probably 4 nights a week, with maybe 1 or 2 nights that are less, and catch up on the weekend,” meant “8-8-6-5-8-10-9” rather than “4-4-4-4-4-10-10.” They all pushed me to go get counseling if I needed it (implication in this case: I needed it.) The questioning was not particularly pleasant for me, since I am doing very well, but had a really bad experience in therapy a couple years ago when my therapist decided I was depressed at a period I was particularly happy in my life (!), and that every protestation of such happiness was just a “cover-up” for my true depression (!), and spent literally hours and hours trying to convince me of this such that I would leave every session in tears because woman would not believe any of the words I was saying except about 10% that she would twist to fit her narrative of my head, which had no correlation whatsoever to what was actually in my head. So, because that day I was sick was way an exception for me, and still not even very bad, their attention mostly just reminded me of that therapist. But it shows that the UHS people clearly see a lot of students who come in and really do need help/a better sleeping schedule.</p>
<p>-I work really, really hard to get grades with which I am satisfied. But it would never “do” to look like I’m going to go sit down and do my pset on a Saturday afternoon, or try to finish catching up on my readings. I don’t know whether, when my friend M says to me, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t done aaaaaanything this week,” that means “I actually didn’t do anything this week,” or “I did only half of the readings for this week and I am about to go catch up.” I feel like it is probably the latter, but nobody would say so. So when people ask me “oh how are you doing with your work,” I do not respond, with a slightly neurotic twitch in my left eye, “I am going to finally catch up this weekend dammit hahaha” because, let’s be real, I’d be creeped if anyone responded that way to me. Instead I respond more like “oh, it’s coming okay, but there is still so much more to do!” I feel like there is a pattern throughout the school of downplaying how hard we work so that we don’t look neurotic/to avoid even somewhat appearing to be bragging about how hard we work.</p>