The first year of college has always been a promise of a potentially transformative experience for many. Countless students have stepped foot on college and by the end of the school year, left a different person. Before stepping foot on Harvard, I thought much the same. I didn’t know exactly what I was in for, but just the idea of joining a storied institution alongside thousands of interesting and passionate people from diverse backgrounds across the world sounded transformative already, even if I was unsure about the details of how that would manifest. Another important aspect would of course be the academics here. My choice of classes, my professors, my TAs, the work I would do, these would surely come to influence me in many ways. And they all did! Yet the biggest story and influence of the school year is something no one could have foreseen: a virus that has caused a pandemic and a total restructuring of our current lives.

Not only did all students have to abruptly leave campus long before the semester was coming to end, we returned to lives that were drastically different as well. Concurrently, the world around us had to grapple with drastic changes and important questions, questions that will continue to be asked even after the pandemic has passed us by. Issues like the distribution of wealth, national self-sufficiency, international politics, global supply chains, the burden of debt, and more are all ones that are integral to the very structure of how our current world works. What will the world look like if any of these undergo a significant change? And how will that change interact with existing variables of change such as the climate crisis? The scope of thinking required to adequately grasp the magnitude of the issues we are dealing with is intimidating. An important lesson I learned from a history class this semester on American capitalism is that the things that happen in the real world, the kind of things that will dig their roots into our reality and future history textbooks, are almost impossible to predict in the moment. So many things that we thought would be consequential turned out to be another blip in history, and yet so many seemingly minor developments have unexpectedly changed the world. Despite this unpredictability, I still believe it’s important for individuals to have some sort of framework in mind when considering the development of major issues such as the impact of the pandemic or climate change, which brings me to the next important lesson of my year.

I’ve come to believe that the best ways of thinking about our world and important problems, and by extension the best educations, are inherently interdisciplinary in nature. Events in the real world do not consciously restrain themselves to just one area or field. Actors in our world are so interlinked that any developments will inevitably find itself crossing boundaries of disciplines. And so, I have discovered that it is the classes I chose outside of my discipline that has become the most rewarding. In fact, this current pandemic has lent itself as a relevant topic in just about every class I’ve had the fortune of taking thus far. Last semester I took a general education class called “Infectious Diseases and Social Injustice”. I learned about the history of major diseases in history, epidemiology, and had long discussions regarding the influence of diseases on shaping social structure throughout history. We discussed the ethics of the biomedical field and pharmaceutical companies, actions of governments and institutions, and the disproportionate impact of diseases and a flawed health system on the poor and underserved. At the time I took the class because of its great reviews, interesting curriculum, and frankly I needed to fill up a slot on my schedule! What was just a backhanded choice at the moment turned into one of my favorite classes last term, and its material has become obviously relevant and useful for me in understanding the pandemic. In a class on innovation, we had multiple guest lectures from entrepreneurs, academics, and business executives. That included founders of biomedical startups and researchers, which are obviously relevant, but in light of current questions on the role of entrepreneurial forces and innovation in helping solve this crisis, the things I learned in that class has become relevant in ways I did not foresee.

Yet although the things I learned in classes from last semester has become unexpectedly relevant in light of the current pandemic, nothing has been a more powerful experience than taking classes and seeing how they applied themselves to the crisis in real-time this term. My class on the history of American capitalism was invaluable in thinking about events such as the pandemic in the context of a long history of economic and social development. We were encouraged to think about how this pandemic would impact issues such as labor, wealth distribution, and the changing dynamics of America’s economy. A class on international trade and economic development with a focus on East Asia expanded my horizons and allowed me to have a more global view of how countries work together in driving growth and development, as well as how that will continue post covid-19. Topics such as environmentally sustainable international growth was present as well. The pandemic helped bring in additional conversations regarding the future of globalization and the existing world order since the end of World War II, with questions on international trade and cooperation, supply lines, and national self-sufficiency being at the forefront of the crisis and my class. This EXPOS class has been instrumental in developing a framework in thinking about crises and how humans may respond to them. More importantly, many of the questions raised by the pandemic are the same questions we have been thinking of all semester long. What are the environmental, social, political, economic, and ultimately the human cost of these crises? How can we better work together to solve these problems? How do we determine who will be the haves and have-nots? Hopefully as people start to think about these questions for the current pandemic, they will not forget them as we continue discussions and efforts for combatting climate change and other crises long into the future.

From thinking about class materials across various fields and having strikingly similar discussions regarding the pandemic in different classes, the pandemic has brought out crossroads between different fields in my education and connected them to a common topic. I was shown the different perspectives that many have regarding the same important issues, and I could also see the different things they chose to focus on. Despite the fact that in many cases these perspectives were different in scope, focus, and nature, I found that as a student standing at the crossroad of these disciplines they actually came together like pieces of a puzzle. Having an educated, wholistic framework of thinking about issues from multiple perspectives and disciplines is an invaluable concept and ability in our interconnected world. This includes not only the topic of Covid-19, but also climate change as well. Through observing the actions of institutions such as Harvard in responding to this pandemic, there has also been sobering realizations of the flaws of institutions, even ones I am enthusiastically a part of. Harvard has made mistakes throughout the year as well, quickly dispersing naïve pre-frosh conceptions of what Harvard is like. No institution in the world is perfect, and this has important implications when thinking about institutional response to climate change as well.

The lessons gleaned from this ongoing experience has been present in thinking about the climate crisis as well. In fact, every single class I took this semester had as part of its curriculum, a discussion on aspects of environmentalism. The American capitalism class talked about the early reliance of the American economy upon commodification of the land and the impacts of American industry on the environment. The international trade class had a whole section of the curriculum dedicated to discussing the role of multilateral institutions and global trade in enabling clean, sustainable growth. Important and complex issues, such as the climate crisis or the current pandemic, are never confined to just one dimension. In fact, one of the essential reasons they’re so important is their potential to have huge impact across a wide variety of aspects of our lives and the world.

So, what exactly is the lesson here? An important one is the multidimensional and multidisciplinary nature of important topics such as the climate crisis and covid-19, and thus potential solutions must be thought of in matching terms of scope and breadth. And for personal lessons concerning myself and my growth throughout this year, what stands out has been rethinking the nature of what kind of education is most valuable to me as a person, as well as the methods through which I should obtain that education. Being here at Harvard this year, and then going through this pandemic while I continue to take Harvard classes is an experience that has, above all else, broadened my horizons and my views. I suspect this will continue in the next couple of years at this institution, but I hope to keep in mind something important: despite Harvard being one of the most revered institutions of learning in the world, there is no better teacher than the real world. I had taken all these classes across a number of subjects and I found them interesting in the moment, but it was only through this pandemic that all of it synthesized and came together in such powerful way. I have full confidence that for the rest of my life, the events that shape our world will be just as instrumental in guiding my learning and thinking as my years in the classroom, likely in ways that will be completely unexpected. After all, for all my pondering of what would happen during my first year at Harvard that would be influential to me, what ended up being the most impactful of all was something that no one saw coming. In fact, it’s something that is not special, unique, or limited to Harvard at all, but rather something that is common to people the world over. This too, is perhaps a lesson on how education is something rooted in the real world and not confined within the ivy walls of any institution, no matter how storied or prestigious those walls are.