HGSE Admissions Blog

Disclaimer: take what’s below with a grain of ENFJ salt.

As someone who completed a social experiment that involved getting in a picture and having a meaningful interaction with a new person every day for 1,000 consecutive days, the vibrant stop-and-say-hello culture at HGSE is probably the aspect of my daily experience that I cherish the most. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to absorb the light of four or five smiling hellos just in the time it takes to walk the 50 or so feet from the entrance of Gutman Library to the second-floor computer lab, where I do most of my paper writing.

While the breadth of the Harvard community will undoubtedly place you in contact with individuals from other schools and programs, the brief year that bounds most Ed.M. experiences excites the atmosphere with a sense of gameness. You will bond with your HGSE peers in a special way. Just ten weeks into new friendships, I keep hearing people say some version of the phrase “it feels like we’ve known each other forever.” It has been a totally pleasant irony to learn that the factor that I knew the least about in preparing my application – who exactly my colleagues would be – has become the fulcrum of my entire graduate school experience.

When I’m not happily digressing — “edugression” is the term I’ve been trying to make sticky (this happens most frequently on Thursday, my “say yes to everything” day) — into chats, meals, and sometimes full-blown events that I didn’t even know were happening, like Rohina Malik’s incredible one-woman theatrical performance “Unveiled”, or an address from former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at the JFK Forum at the Harvard Kennedy School, I spend a lot of time reading at Gutman. (Note: I’m a slow reader, and I’m surviving the intense reading load.) The epicenter of HGSE, Gutman is fully equipped with a first-floor café that has quite good — and quite cheap — food, and rare is the moment when you won’t spot friends engaged in a conversation that they are eager to receive your thoughts in.

I also spend a good amount of time doing homework at Langdell Hall, which is close by on the Harvard Law School campus, and the Smith Campus Center and Widener Library, both also nearby on the undergrad campus. For any concerned introverts reading, the latter three locations are by most standards more beautiful than Gutman AND can liberate you from endless socializing. In case what I’ve described sounds too draining, don’t worry, hanging at these spots will help you still feel integrated to school sans excessive people time.

Within the typicality of my high-velocity, full-of-surprises days, other highlights include dinners at friends’ houses, basketball and yoga at either Hemenway or the MAC (the two closest gyms to HGSE), and student-organized events like World Café, which combats information FOMO by periodically bringing into the same room the eclectic knowledge of students from various Ed.M. strands who have different but often complimentary interests and are taking different courses.

Oh and classes. I’m taking some of those too. 🙂

Blog written by Patrick Bubul. Photo provided by Tanit S.

Hi, Patrick Bubul here! I spent the first 18 years of my life just outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania before moving to the greater Boston area in 2005 to begin my undergrad at Boston College, where I majored in English. I’ve been in the Boston area ever since despite flirting with moving to New York City every single year. (I’m finally beginning to comfortably say that Boston is home.) I’m in the Human Development and Psychology program primarily to learn more about the psychology of confidence, risk-taking, and novice status as it pertains to non-native English speakers, although I’m quite happily finding that my academic experiences thus far at HGSE have been taking me in new and unexpected directions. Prior to starting my Ed.M. this fall, I was running an English tutoring business that focuses on helping advanced speakers of other languages refine their conversation skills. I’m also a word nerd, a basketball lover, a guitar player, and a proud chihuahua dad.