<p>I'm interested in creative writing, but I don't feel like my abilities are "polished" yet. I have a lot of plans but I'm really just starting to put them onto paper. From my visit in April and a lot I've read (especially </p>
<p>I've started to get the impression that the Harvard "literary scene" is really exclusive and snooty, especially within The Advocate. I love to read but I don't know if I'm sufficiently "intellectual," I'm definitely not cool, and I really don't think I can compete with people who have won prizes and already found their way of expressing themselves. </p>
<p>I'm attending in the fall and I'm nervous about the comp process (do I really have to comp The Crimson, The Lampoon, AND The Advocate? I don't want to work for either of the first two and now I'm seriously reconsidering my opinion of the latter) and about getting into creative writing classes. What is the Advocate comp like? (I read an article where one girl was made to drink as some sort of initiation thing until she blacked out, then was raped.) I have the feeling I'm just going to be shot down. I was hoping to find kind of a community of creative people working together, but now I'm starting to feel like this is going to end with me the only kid in class not invited to the birthday party. </p>
<p>I'm not really one to grovel at the feet of exclusive groups. Should I even try and get involved with the writing scene? I can certainly write just as well in the privacy of my own notebooks, but I feel like I'd be missing out on an opportunity. I've considered Tuesday Magazine and definitely the Harvard Book Review as well. Are these less exclusive alternatives? I chose Harvard because I want to read, write, think, and collaborate, not play games with social hierarchies. </p>
<p>I was hoping an alum/current student could answer this one? </p>
<p>@HazelDormouse, could you send me the same PM? Or if it’s not too damaging, simply post it here? I’m sure I’m not the only other person who’s been waiting for a response to OP’s question. TIA</p>
<p>Sorry I’m a little late to the party here. I’m a Harvard student who has a lot answers to these questions, though I don’t want to put the info out publicly. I’m going to pm the OP and WasatchWriter to see if you guys want to have a convo about this.</p>
<p>Not Harvard undergrad alum, but creative people are abundant at Oberlin, Skidmore, Pomona, Wesleyan, Bard - and for creative writing even MIT, Hopkins and Stanford. </p>
<p>The Advocate used to be a first class literary magazine devoted BOTH to Harvard writers as well as to the larger literary world. For example, in the 70s it published highly regarded restrospectives of the work of James Agee (containing theretofore unpublished material) as well as editions devoted to women writers (where it published Katherine Anne Porter and Eudora Welty manuscripts – both of whom were alive at the time – as well as the science fiction (yes!!) of Ursula K. LeGuin. The issues were designed by design school students and had collector edition quality look and feel. Currently, the Advocate is little more than a self-referential tribe that publishes, in undistinguised garb, a mishmosh of photos, drawings, essays, alongside the occasional poem from a student.</p>
<p>Umm, that’s not quite overwhelming evidence of a focus beyond Harvard, since Agee was a Harvard alumnus, and former Advocate editor, and Ursula Kroeber went to Radcliffe. (Katherine Anne Porter sure didn’t.) Publishing Porter and Welty in the 1970s didn’t exactly qualify as groundbreaking or even modestly unconventional; they were both universally respected, brand-name writers then.</p>
<p>FWIW, I comped the Advocate in my freshman fall and didn’t have any bad experiences. I didn’t get in, but I never felt pressured to drink, etc etc. I made it to the final round but was then cut. Different boards / different years may have different experiences, though. </p>
<p>I never met anybody who comped the Crimson, Advocate, and Lampoon. They attract really different crowds. The Crimson article is very clearly presenting that idea as a rumor that “people say,” not as some kind of advice.</p>