ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY. Yesterday we had the stupid Harvard Step Test

September 22, 1954

Yesterday we had the stupid Harvard Step Test. Being in reasonable shape for soccer, I passed it with no sweat. (Or to be more accurate, a lot of sweat, but very little effort.) The only trouble came when “Colonel” Jackson made us reach over to feel the neck artery of the guy next to you, my neighbor was so slippery with perspiration that I couldn’t find his pulse. So when that Fascist character came by to write it down, I just made up a number that popped into my head.

When we got back to the dorm, the three of us reviewed this fairly degrading experience. We all agreed that the most undignified and unnecessary aspect was the damn posture picture just before the Step Test. Imagine, now Harvard has a personal file of everyone — or perhaps more accurately, every member of The Class — standing naked in front of the camera, ostensibly to test our posture. But probably so that when one of us becomes President of the — United States, the phys. ed. department can pull out his picture and see what the leader of the greatest nation in the world looks like in the raw.

What really bugged Wigglesworth was that some thief could break into the IAB, filch our photographs, and sell them for a fortune.

“To whom?” I asked. “Who’d pay to see the pictures of a thousand naked Harvard freshmen?”

This gave him pause for thought. Who indeed would treasure such a portrait gallery? Some horny Wellesley girls, perhaps. Then something else occurred to me: do Cliffies have to take these pictures too?

Newall thought they did. And I conceived this great idea of sneaking into the Radcliffe gym to steal their pictures. What a show! Then we’d know what girls to concentrate our efforts on.

At first they really liked my plan. But then their courage sort of evanesced.

And Newall argued that a “real man” should be able to find out empirically.

So much for bravery. I would have liked that midnight raid.

I think.

***

Study cards were due in at 5:00 P.M. on Thursday. This gave The Class of ’58 a little time to shop around and choose a balanced program. They’d need courses for their majors, some for distribution, and some perhaps for cultural enrichment. And, most important, a gut. At least one really easy course was absolutely necessary for those who were either preppies or pre-med.

For Ted Lambros, who was certain he’d be majoring in classics, the selection was fairly straightforward: Latin 2A, Horace and Catullus, and Nat. Sci. 4 with the pyrotechnic L. K. Nash, who regularly blew himself up several times a year.

Both as a gut and a requirement, he took Greek A, an introduction to the classical version of the language he had used since birth. After two semesters he would be able to read Homer in the original. And in the meantime, as a fourth course, he would read the famous epics in translation with John Finley, the legendary Eliot Professor of Greek Literature. “Hum 2,” as it was affectionately known, would provide stimulation, information, and, as everyone at Harvard knew, an easy grade.

Danny Rossi had already planned his schedule during his cross-country trek. Music 51, Analysis of Form, an unavoidable requirement for every major. But the rest would be pure joy. A survey of orchestral music from Haydn to Hindemith. Then, beginning German, to prepare him to conduct the Wagner operas. (He’d start Italian and French later.) And, of course, the college’s most popular and inspirational free ride — Hum 2.

He had wanted to take Walter Piston’s Composition Seminar, and had assumed that the great man would admit him even though Danny was a freshman and the class had mostly graduates. But Piston turned him down “for his own good.”

“Look,” the composer had explained, “the piece you handed in was charming. And I really didn’t have to see it. Gustave Landau’s letter was enough for me. But if I take you now, you might be in the paradoxical position of — how can I put it? — being able to sprint and not to walk. If it’s any consolation, when Leonard Bernstein was here we forced him to do his basic music ‘calisthenics’ just like you.”

“Okay,” Danny said with polite resignation. And as he left thought, I guess that was his way of saying my piece is pretty juvenile.

--*--

Freshmen who are preppies have a great advantage. Through their network of old graduates familiar with the Cambridge scene, they learn precisely what the courses are to take and which ones to avoid.

The Harris Tweed underground imparts to them the secret word that is the key to making good at Harvard: bullshit. The greater the opportunity for tossing the verbiage like so much salad (unimpeded by the need for such trivia as facts), the more likely the course would be a snap.

They also arrived at college well versed in the techniques of the essay question, and could pad their paragraphs with such useful phrases as “from a theoretical point of view,” or “upon first inspection we may seem to discern a certain attitude which may well survive even closer scrutiny,” and so forth. This sort of wind can sail you halfway through an hour test before you have to lay a single fact on paper.

But you can’t do that in math. So for God’s sake, man, stay away from science. Even though there’s a Nat. Sci. requirement for course distribution, take it in your sophomore year. By then you’ll have perfected your prose style so that you might even be able to argue that, from a certain point of view, two and two might just possibly equal five.

The program Andrew Eliot selected was a preppie’s dream. First, Soc. Rel. 1, because the name — Social Relations — was itself an invitation to throw bull. Then English 10, a survey from Chaucer to his cousin Tom. It was fairly rigorous but he’d read most of the stuff (at least in Hymarx outlines) in senior year at prep school.

His choice of Fine Arts 13 also showed astuteness, Not much reading, little taking down of notes. For it meant mostly watching slides. Moreover, the noon hour of its meeting and the semidarkness of its atmosphere were most conducive if one needed a short nap before lunch. Also, Newall pointed out, “As soon as we find girlfriends at the Cliffe, that auditorium will be the perfect spot for making out.”

There was no problem about his final course. It had to be Hum 2. In addition to its many other attractions, since the instructor held the chair endowed by Andrew’s ancestors, he looked upon Professor Finley as a sort of family retainer.

The night they handed in their study cards, Andrew, Wig, and Newall had a gin-and-tonic party to honor their official course commitment to self-betterment.

“So, Andy,” Dickie asked after his fourth, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”

And Andrew answered, only half in jest, “Frankly, I don’t think I really want to grow up.”