Take charge

If anyone had said to me in the summer of 2009 that I would be doing economics at Harvard, I wouldn't have believed it to be possible. Yet here I was from mid-June to mid-August in a secondary summer school program with 1000 kids from the world over.

Learning and fun

There are only 10 or 12 Indians and I learn as much outside the classroom as I did inside from brilliant Harvard professors. We pour over pages to be read, assignments and problems to be solved and turned in each day, but manage to steal time -out with lots of fun and meaningful activity too.

For instance the shelter for homeless people where I volunteered two hours a week, was so much about contribution and commitment and doing it with peers from all over the world was really fulfilling. We also volunteered at Soup Kitchen which fed the homeless.

With July 4 bands, and great food, queuing up in the cafeteria, pouring over books in Widner library and sunning ourselves on the grass of Harvard square, I remember my life back in Chennai where my summers would have been so different if I had not come here.

A chauffeured car to ferry me back and forth from school, a caring maid to clean my room and make my bed, my mum to wake me and my dad to go to the bookstore with. Instead I was spending my summer growing up at Harvard, swinging like a pendulum through different experiences, talking with the best minds, cleaning my room, enjoying the fresh air, knowing what hard work is about and what the GDP of Zimbabwe teaches the rest of the world.

The independence you feel, enforcing your own disciplines is not easy and a lesson to learn. I would go back to study in the US in a heartbeat.

Rohini is studying in the U.S.