Part V of a series.

The year is 2008. I sit down in front of my computer and attempt to fill out the Harvard Advising Questionnaire before my freshman year. According to Harvard, I need to list my top three extracurricular activities, number my top three possible fields of study, and answer a question about where I want to be in ten years.

The drop-down list of concentrations grabs my attention. During my college applications process, I had listed Communications and Broadcast Journalism as my proposed major, holding tight to my dream of becoming a news reporter. Looking at Harvard’s many options, I browse the web sites of the departments for English, Literature, and Visual & Environmental Studies. An FAQ section on the Harvard academics page about creating one’s own major on campus leads me to click on the Special Concentrations department. The more I probe through the site and read through the creative names and thesis projects of previous concentrations, the more I want to pursue one. I imagine taking classes from the English and VES department to make my own study for Communications.

However, when I arrive on campus during Opening Days in September, I meet with my academic adviser over lunch in Loker Commons and she discourages me from pursuing a Special Concentration. Feeling somewhat defeated, I decide to hide my intentions of pursuing a Special Concentration.

The following spring, I enroll in a freshman seminar called The Art of Storytelling, in which I study various forms of narrative. For my final project, I write a short screenplay about my transition from high school to Harvard. When I go in for a meeting with my seminar professor to talk about the project, we begin to discuss the creative projects that students undertake in her department, Folklore & Mythology—and I leave her office contemplating a concentration in F&M.

By the time sophomore fall begins, I spend my spare hours sifting through the Registrar’s web site. There, I browse classes—searching for ones that focus on storytelling, journalism, media studies, and the arts. I find that I can study the personal narratives of people and their social interactions in Psychology and change my mind from F&M to Psych. However, I am still wavering between Psych, Sociology, VES, and Social Anthropology. Finally, on the night before study cards are due, I write an article for the Indy about how happy I am to be an official Psych concentrator.

However, when I chart out my classes for sophomore spring during winter break, my happiness fades away. I realize that I do not want to spend hours in statistics classes, labs, and MCB 80. It’s just not my passion. I decide to switch to English so I can take creative writing classes and tell my own stories. Before I start applying for a change of concentration, one other ‘department’ on the Registrar’s site catches my eye—the Dramatic Arts secondary field. I meet with my freshman seminar professor, who knows about my love for storytelling and ask her if there is any way for me to pursue Dramatic Arts as a concentration instead of as a secondary field. She tells me that the only way to do that is to apply through a…wait for it…Special Concentration.

Realizing that I’ve come full-circle since my discovery of the Special Concentrations department pre-freshman-year, I decide to go for it. At the end of April, I find an adviser in the English department. Knowing that the SC committee meets twice a year to read over applications, I am intent on making the fall deadline for October of my junior year. When I return to campus after the summer, I take a gamble on choosing my classes—signing up for a schedule composed of five classes for a concentration that has not been officially approved yet. At this point, I am still registered in the Psych department and the Director of Undergraduate Studies glances nervously at me as I ask for her signature and tells me that I am taking a big risk. If my concentration does not get approved, I will need to spend the rest of my three semesters cramming in courses for Psych or whichever department I fall into.

On Yom Kippur that month, I decide to fast in solidarity as I have done the past two years with my blockmate and I stay inside, working all day on honing my proposal for my Special Concentration in Narrative in Film & Performance. I turn it in the next week and hold my breath until I get a response.

It is rejected.

As my eyes look over the email from the committee, I realize the reason for the rejection is not my concentration; it’s my adviser. She is not going to be on campus my senior year. This means that if I can find a new adviser, my concentration can still get approved. My adviser, apologetic that she has not mentioned her forthcoming absence from Harvard, directs me to another professor in the English department who specializes in rhetoric and regularly pushes for public speaking initiatives on campus. I get in touch with him and make one more permutation of my proposal. He agrees to advise me and on October 25, 2010, I receive a letter approving my Special Concentration in Narrative in Rhetoric & Performance.

Through my Special Concentration, I have been able to take some of the coolest classes at Harvard.

I create dances about my life through Introduction to Choreography. I study the formulas of great American speeches with a visiting professor from Northwestern’s Rhetoric department. I cross-register at the Kennedy School and learn how to weave together effective stories in public narrative from a professor who participated in the Cesar Chavez campaign. I delve into the study of the human voice and its variety in Vocal Production for the Stage. I craft my power of persuasion through a course on the Elements of Rhetoric. I design a one-on-one tutorial with a former Good Morning America producer to study talk show hosts and Ryan Seacrest’s on-camera interviewing techniques.

Every class that I’ve taken for my concentration has emphasized the content of presenting myself in public, whether it is through speech or performance. Not only have I had incredible amounts of fun in each class and gotten to know the stories of each of my individual classmates and professors, I have also received an immeasurable preparation for my future career in broadcast journalism and the performing arts.

My concentration will culminate in my senior thesis, an autoethnography about my life, a script for a play based on the autoethnography, and a live one-woman performance of the play.

I cannot describe how thankful I am for the chance to have pursued my real-world passions in the academic realm here. When I wave my diploma in the air this spring, I will be happy knowing that that rectangular piece of paper represents the truly once-in-a-lifetime education that I have received.

Sanyee Yuan’12 (syuan@fas) wants you to create a Special Concentration in Autoethnographic Studies. Or anything else that stimulates your interests.