Many leavetakers who devote their time to community service work say they believe the experience opened new possibilities to them. "I met enough lawyers to decide I don't want to go to law school," Ladin says. "I realized that it's possible to go to Harvard and be a union organizer, not a professional."

"I never had any idea of how many different jobs people could do instead of just being bankers or lawyers," says Rachel E. Golden '86-'87, who spent her year off traveling and working through Europe and Israel. "I met so many crazy and different people and it is meeting those people that changed me," she says.

"During the boat ride from Greece, we spent one night on a dock in Crete and a storyteller told tales by candlelight," Golden recalls. "It wasn't a very safe part of town, but I felt really secure sitting by this little candle stuck in a paper cup and listening to a man who wasn't that much older than me telling stories of people on the road. He didn't want to get a Ph.D or anything, he just wanted to be a storyteller. That is one of my most vivid memories."

Students often complain about feeling out of touch with the subjects they study. For James A. Anderson '86-'87, an East Asian Languages and Civilizations concentrator, it was the desire to see "the flesh and blood behind what I was learning" that prompted his enrollment in a language program at Nanjing University in China.

Anderson says that after his junior year, "All I could look ahead to was my thesis and [the idea of doing] it made me tired. From over here I couldn't really see what China was all about." Anderson's thesis concerns modern Chinese art and he calls his year off "a spiritual consolidation of a lot of things." The Dunster resident says, "[The time off] changed my over all perspective on how my studying affects people over there. Meeting the contemporary artists and seeing the conditions they live under put the subject in context; it lent reality to the texts."

Rhonda J. Roberts '86 had similar reasons for leaving. "I left because I was starting to burn out. Things were beginning to have no meaning for me," Roberts says. "What good does it do to go to class and take note without knowing how what you're learning affects other people? I started thinking it would be nice to see some of what I'm learning in practice."

Roberts spent the second semester of her junior year England working as a translator and waitress in a small hotel. The Government concentrator says she felt her time at Harvard was going much too quickly. "It didn't make sense for me to try to choose a career or grad school without having lived in another culture."

Stewart Gibson '87-'88, who spent a year at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, also left for academic reasons. "I wanted to study something that was more limited in scope than it is possible to examine here," explains the History concentrator. "I felt the need to slow down a bit and take a look at things from the outside, and this gave me the chance to concentrate on one academic track," he adds.

Although the History Department granted Gibson one semester credit for his year-long labor, departments here give course credit for study abroad on a case-by-case basis. Most students enrolled in course programs abroad say they receive some credit from Harvard.

Focusing Academic Goals

"Now when I look at the [Harvard] coursebook, it's not with the same sense of confused awe. I have a focus," says Gibson. "It's no longer a question of having to choose four courses out of four million. My leave of absence has given me an academic direction, and that makes it much easier to put together a cohesive curriculum."

Even those leavetakers who did not spend their time off studying agree that time away from Harvard was a decisive factor in increasing the satisfaction of their education. Lockery recalls, "I didn't return with a senior thesis in my backpocket, but I do have experiences that will inevitably shape the next two years and beyond."

In addition to focusing academic goals, time off often helps students put their lives in perspective. Students say that leaves of absence give them a chance to think about where they're headed and also make them more relaxed about not having a specific goal.

"A certain percentage of Harvard students have been very pressured for a very long time. There is a tremendous amount of exceed/excel stimulus and a lot of people think, "I need to stop that for a little while," says Kain. "A lot of people come in [to OCS] without any definite plans," she says. "They tell me they need to be away from Harvard; they need to be in a different space and time for a while."

"During my time off," says Roberts, "I learned what I'm capable of. I learned that I could set my own agenda and make it work for me." Roberts says she's noticed that people who return from leaves of absence are, on the whole, calmer. "I think it's because we realize in a very large sense that this all doesn't matter. We all want our GPAs, but getting that paper done by five just isn't as important any more. How you do isn't who you are," she explains.