Unclassified: Harvard Square

For a first time visitor to Harvard, the cobbled streets, winding alleys, and the red brick buildings all elicit a feeling of longing deep down, probably a sort of faint jealousy for anyone who did not get to go to an Ivy League college. Me. Unlike BU and MIT, Harvard has a distinctive feel of a campus. The old Harvard Yard and the new Harvard Yard are surrounded by red brick buildings, albeit all very similar looking. Even the Law School has its own yard. This enclosure and the security certainly brings bodies, minds and souls relatively close. I sat in Fellipe’s and watch students come and go, in giant sweatshirts, and alarmingly similar looking JanSport backpacks, cell phone in hand, and the kind of hair that’s easily recognizable for college students, messy and i-just-don't-care-how-i-look.

So here I was, in an Urban Outfitter store in Harvard Square, searching for a non allergy-causing belt for my rapidly shrinking waist as a result of bad food and irregular schedule. As expected, UO looks the same as the ones in Westwood Village and on Bancroft, nothing special to it, but I do want to comment that for some reason students here dress nicer than the ones I saw in California. Maybe it’s the weather, the blasting wind and unpredictable weather allowing a much varied expression of the layered look and cold-weather accessories. Very nicely put together, intelligent but not bookish, stylish but not too snobbish.

Anyway as I was looking for a belt, two girls in giant Harvard sweatshirts were talking behind me. One girl held up a maroon-color leather bag with an inquisitive look as if she was not sure what to do with it.

Her friend said, “You know what I do? I always ask myself, do I have to have this?”

Girl with bag replied quickly, “Yes! I got to have it.”

Her friend went on, “Does money mean absolutely nothing to you when it comes to owning that purse? If you answer yes, then get it.”

Girl with bag hesitated, swinging the bag this way and that. Her friend edged on, “OK, will you die if you don’t have this bag?”

“Probably not,” came the grudging reply from the girl now minus the bag. “You are right. I have so many bags already…”

It made me laugh. I used to have the exact same conversation with my roommate. It’s just so funny, and it made me miss her terribly. I wonder how she is doing in that middle-eastern conservative country, eating chicken and rice everyday, wearing head dresses and ankle-length long skirts and taking 6-hour bus rides to get her mail.