HGSE Admissions Blog

I was admittedly ambivalent about coming back to Harvard for the much acclaimed but optional ‘January Term’. It meant I would get under three weeks back home in Pakistan for winter break. But my well-wishers insisted that ‘Informal Learning for Children’ with my Program Director, Joe Blatt, would be a life-changing experience. And I have to say I’m so glad I hit the tarmac just in time to be whisked dramatically from the airport straight into my first class!

The premise behind ‘Informal Learning’ is that differences in educational outcomes can partially be explained by access to informal learning experiences (television, apps, museums etc). It’s a powerful idea and helped me really appreciate how education can be much more than what is imparted in the classroom. I cherished our visit to the Institute of Contemporary Art, where I appreciated how observing art is one of the best ways to develop an eye for detail.

Each day of the class brought in guest speakers straight from the Sesame Workshop in New York City. I had grown up watching Sesame and the clips they showed us brought back nostalgia. But this class taught me that Sesame was the ultimate informal learning experience. Little by little, the guest speakers exposed us to their scientific approach to developing and testing educational content. I learned about Sesame’s commendable efforts in bringing the message of unity to Afghanistan, girl power to India and fighting trauma in Syria. I realized that Sesame was an incredibly powerful force in bringing peace and enlightenment to the world.

In fact, I had my most poignant moment so far in that classroom. The first guest speaker was the CEO Jeffrey Dunn. He explained the entire process of how Sesame had turned itself around operationally and financially over the years. And at the end he told us that even though he was a Harvard Business School graduate himself, he sincerely believed that it was people like us who had opted to specialize in education who were going to solve the biggest problems in our world.

And it was at that moment that I realized that all the courses offered in the Graduate School of Education, whether focused on entrepreneurship or machine learning or negotiation, were designed out of the sincere belief that the academic lens of education brought a unique perspective to all these topics. Just as Sesame was an educational product that was making the world better in so many different ways, my graduate degree in education would allow me to be a better person, a better entrepreneur and a better community member.

Networking was part of the class experience. I got to have lunch with Miles Ludwig, the Sesame VP of Digital, exactly my area of interest, and I’ve been able to stay in touch with him since then. So basically this class had the best networking, the best guest speakers and convinced me that I had picked the right field. That’s a lot more than I bargained for!

Being back for January term actually helps you get in the right mindset for your final semester. A few things I’ve kept in mind while figuring out how to spend my final few precious months at Harvard:

• There are always more exciting courses around than you can fit into your schedule. But one of the best ways to satisfy your cravings is to audit a few courses where you attend lecture but don’t do the assignments. I’ve done that for several courses such as ‘Preventing Digital Disaster’ with David Eaves at the Harvard Kennedy School. I love the unique format of the class with different stakeholders of Healthcare.gov coming in and sharing their perspective on why the project failed and giving us a chance to try to come to a neutral perspective. I’ve followed up on this academic interest by attending several related talks at the Kennedy School.
• Make a conscious effort to reach out to interesting students and professors while you can. I had a wonderful one hour chat with a professor of robotics here even though I’m not taking a class with her. I found another professor in the School of Engineering doing interesting things around teaching design to MBA students and she’s given me a chance to join her exciting research group.
• Make sure you experience a little bit of all the things that make Harvard special. I’m glad I took out time to cheer on our top ranked squash team. I’m even more glad I got accepted into the telescope classes taught by the Student Astronomers at Harvard-Radcliffe and that I’ve already squinted at Mars through the gigantic telescope in the Science Center!
• And every now and then forget the frenzy and pause to take in the majestic sights of Harvard Yard and remember how lucky you are and how much you’ll miss this.

Written by Jazib Zahir. Photos provided by Jazib Zahir

My name is Jazib Zahir and I’m doing an M.Ed. in TIE. I studied undergraduate engineering at Stanford and have been working in my home country of Pakistan since then. I’ve been managing a software studio where we do app development and taught courses related to communication, entrepreneurship and education at my local Lahore University of Management Sciences.