What’s It Like Being a Tutor at Cabot?
Each year, Cabot House selects a new batch of resident tutors. Many prospective tutors have questions: about the house system, roles and responsibilities as a tutor, and what makes being a tutor at Cabot House such a unique and rewarding experience.
Fortunately, Julie Kobick, a Cabot House alumnus—both as a student and a tutor—has written a lovely essay explaining the many aspects of being a tutor at Cabot. We encourage you to take a look!
What is a House?
One of the defining features of undergraduate life at Harvard is house life. Harvard has twelve “houses”—like residential colleges—that students move to at the beginning of their sophomore year. Usually, students will live in the same house for the remainder of their time at Harvard.
Right before spring break of their freshmen year, the students form blocking groups. These are groups of up to eight friends who decide that they want to live together in the same house. Blocking groups are then randomly assigned to live in one of the twelve upperclassmen houses. On the Thursday before spring break, the freshmen blocking groups find out the house to which they have been assigned to live. It’s a rowdy, exciting day, as the freshmen are paired with their new home for the next three years.
Upperclassmen houses are more than just dormitories; they are close-knit, caring communities and real homes. Each house has its own dining hall, library, laundry and mail rooms, flag, mascot, and common room space. In true Harry Potter fashion, each house is led by two Masters, who are often affiliated with the university as professors. The Resident Dean of each house is the academic point-person for students, and together with the Masters, plays a large role in setting the tone of the house. Each house also has its own tutor staff, custodial staff, and dining hall staff.
Cabot House
The People
More than anything else, the people make Cabot House a very special place to live. Our co-masters—Stephanie and Rakesh Khurana—bring boundless energy and a real passion for fostering a strong sense of community at Cabot. Our resident dean, Jill Constantino, possesses unrivaled cheerfulness and warmth, and immediately sets you at ease. Jill and her husband Michael have three children—Rio, Sol, and Rafa—and Rakesh and Stephanie also have three children—Sonia, Nalini, and Jai. Together, they fill the house with youthful vitality, playfulness, and charm. Mike Russell, the house’s building manager, Amanda Pepper, the house administrator, and Beth Musser, the assistant to the resident dean, are always ready to help out and bring lots of friendliness to A-entryway, where the house offices are located. We are also fortunate at Cabot to have exceptional dining hall staff and custodial staff, who play invaluable roles in making Cabot such a great place to live.
When people come to Cabot, they tend to stay. Susan Livingston, our long-time House Administrator, was with Cabot for 28 years before she recently passed away. Students loved hearing her stories of Cabot lore, history, and trivia. Several of our current tutors were Cabot students as undergraduates, and were thrilled to rejoin the community as tutors.
Cabot Traditions and Identity
While always creating and authoring new meaningful experiences, the community at Cabot is proud of our distinctive traditions. In mid-December, we have a house-wide Festivus celebration, complete with a Festivus pole and the best ethnic food from area restaurants. It’s a celebration only for folks in Cabot, and it is always a lively, festive atmosphere. (For an unbelievable story, make sure to ask about the “feats of strength” competitions during Festivus.) Cabot also puts on a musical every spring; recent performances have been Guys and Dolls, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story, and Annie Get Your Gun. Among other events, our student-run HoCo (house committee) plans an annual Dutch auction, a tailgate at the Harvard-Yale game, a “To Tell the Truth” event, and weekly stein club gatherings. HoCo at Cabot is very active and attracts energetic students with a lot of house pride. In the spring when the weather gets nice, we regularly move dinner outdoors and have a barbecue on the quad.
When students talk about why they love Cabot, they usually say things like, “everyone cares about each other” and “this really feels like a community.” Other houses take pride in their hard-partying atmosphere or their feel of “old-Harvard,” but Cabot students take pride in the connections they have built with each other. This identity manifests itself in big and small ways; you can get a sense of it by checking out the video that Cabot students produced to welcome the new freshmen last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KpLTwUmAQU You&r.squo;ll also notice smaller things, like students regularly inviting the whole house to outings with their friends over the internal house list-serve, Cabot-Open, or planning house-wide dinners with the object of scrambling seating to meet new people.
Cabot Architecture and Locale
Cabot House is a twelve-minute walk from Harvard Square, and is one of three houses that comprise the “Quad” at Harvard. But more than any of the quad houses, Cabot defines the quad area. Its six stately buildings surround the large, grassy quadrangle on three sides, giving students easy access to and a feeling of ownership over the quad. In warm months, the quad is used for Frisbee and pick-up soccer games, house-wide barbecues, and the occasional Cabot House kickball competition. Folks from the neighborhood regularly bring their dogs to run around, and students lounge or read books in the wooden Adirondack chairs dotting the quad. In winter months, you can expect several quad-wide snowball fights.
Because Cabot is made up of six distinct buildings, it has more common meeting space than most houses. Each building has a common room, which is used for weekly study breaks, a capella rehearsals, student group meetings, and house events. Each common room also has a piano, making Cabot the house with the most pianos at Harvard. The Junior Common Room has a pool table, an air hockey table, and a projector screen movie theater space. It also has a permanent stage, which is used for student theater performances and the Cabot House musical. Scattered throughout the house are a number of other unique spaces—there is a dark room, a dance studio, an extremely well-equipped gym, a computer lab, music practice rooms, and a room with a big-screen TV that students use to watch football or play video games. In the basement of one of Cabot’s buildings is Quad Bikes, an independent business that builds inexpensive but well-made bikes from bike parts abandoned in Cambridge.
The dining hall is the nexus of house life. Four of the buildings in Cabot are connected via underground tunnels, and the dining hall sits at the center of these tunnels. It is an informal, homey space, always full of students talking or studying. Students feel comfortable coming down to the dining hall in their pajamas, or sitting for hours after dinner engaged in long discussions. Because Cabot sits a bit farther from Harvard Yard than most houses, the majority of the people in the dining hall at any given time will be Cabot students. This means that the students, tutors, masters, dining hall staff, and house staff get to know and recognize each other more than in most houses.
One particularly attractive feature of living in the quad is its residential feel. The quad is tucked into one of Cambridge’s oldest and most beautiful neighborhoods, and walking past these historic houses every day makes you feel like you are returning to a real home in the evening. Cabot is just a couple of blocks from the strip of Massachusetts Avenue that connects Harvard and Porter Squares. Along that stretch, you have everything you need—several coffee shops, restaurants, bars, dry cleaners, ATMs, a grocery store, Rite Aid pharmacy, and other distinctive shops. Fresh Pond is a twenty-minute walk from Cabot; a run down to Fresh Pond, around it, and back is a great four-mile loop. When you walk to Harvard Square from Cabot, you can cut through Cambridge Common, which is always alive with children’s soccer games, kickball league games, Frisbee matches, and picnicking families during the warmer months. Because of the ample street parking around Cabot, many resident tutors have cars.
Cabot History
Cabot House used to be South House, one of the houses at Radcliffe College. Cabot’s origin as part of Radcliffe is a point of pride for us. The walls of Cabot’s library are ringed with inspirational quotations from notable Radcliffe alumni, and gracing the walls of Cabot’s tunnels are old pictures of architectural details, events, and people from Radcliffe. Cabot alumni have gone on to do amazing things; some notable alums are Benazir Bhutto, Rivers Cuomo (of Weezer fame), Helen Keller, Soledad O’Brien, Bonnie Raitt, Jim Koch (of Sam Adams fame), and Jeffrey Sachs.
Life as a Tutor
Your Role
Tutors wear many different hats in the house, at various times being a role model, mentor, friend, or counselor for students. But more than anything, your primary role as a tutor is just to be a presence in the house. Because an essential part of the tutor role is forming relationships with students, it’s important to spend time with them. This means eating meals in the dining hall, going to house-wide events, engaging students in quality conversations during study breaks, and just in general trying to convey the message to students that you are here for them. You will help students through hard times, celebrate their successes with them, and play an active role in their development during college. You are not expected to know everything or be able to solve every problem for students—indeed, a large part of the job is pointing students to all the excellent resources at Harvard. But you will probably be the most immediate and salient “adult figure” in many Cabot students’ lives, so it’s important for you to establish a comfortable rapport and a sense of trust with the students.
The Type of Person Who Flourishes as a Cabot Tutor
The word that we hear over and over again when people describe Cabot is “community.” We deeply value the community that we’ve built and continue to build at Cabot. Every person in our community brings something unique and meaningful to our house, and the tutors are no exception. So above all else, we’re looking for tutors who are committed to becoming an important and dedicated member of the Cabot community. We want tutors who want to make Cabot their home, not just the place they live or work. Being a tutor isn’t a job; rather it’s an opportunity to join a community and to help students navigate their undergraduate years.
All types of people flourish as tutors at Cabot. We are not looking for any one personality type. Some excellent tutors are introverted while others are extroverted; some are active e-mailers while others connect better in person; some become tutors in their 30s, while others are only a year or two out of college. It is usually the case that great tutors tend to be passionate about their area of study, their work, and their hobbies, and are able to share those passions with students. We celebrate the enormous diversity of people in Cabot, and so hope to have a group of tutors that reflects all the measures of diversity that make us such an interesting community.
People often ask how many hours to expect their role as tutors to take during a week. The answer to this question depends a lot on how people count “working time.” If you would consider eating meals in the dining hall, going to students’ musical performances, or talking to students at study break “working,” then this job is probably not for you, because those life things do take up time. For most tutors, these activities don’t feel like work; they are just fun parts of life. Otherwise, you can probably expect 5 to 10 and rarely more than 15 hours a week doing things like planning events for the house, attending meetings, and doing sophomore advising. Busy times vary throughout the year; the beginning of each semester is a peak time as students are choosing classes and jumping back into extracurriculars, and the busyness ebbs and flows throughout the rest of the semester.
Tutor Responsibilities
Areas of Specialization
Tutors come to Cabot with a wealth of experiences and a diverse mix of academic interests. All tutors will advise students in their primary academic fields. So, a tutor who is a chemistry Ph.D. candidate will likely hold office hours for students taking organic chemistry, and a government Ph.D. candidate will likely advise students on final papers in government courses. Tutors in professional schools (law school, medical school, business school, dental school, Kennedy School of Government, etc.) usually advise students interested in applying to those schools. Pre-law, pre-med, and careers tutors hold information meetings for these students, help them through the application process, take them to their own graduate school classes, and help students learn about careers in these fields.
There are also several other areas of specialization that tutors assume. Sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention tutors (SASH tutors) promote an environment of safe sexual practices among students and can play an important responsive role if a sexual assault occurs. Race relations tutors celebrate the racial diversity in the house and promote an atmosphere of inclusion through events and discussions. BGLTQ tutors likewise aim to promote inclusion and a safe, welcoming environment for BGLTQ students and straight allies. Wellness tutors focus on the overall healthiness of students; these tutors often run yoga sessions, plan back massages during finals period, or arrange for depression screenings at the house. Writing tutors help students in all stages of their writing assignments, from the idea stage through the more technical editing stages. Fellowships tutors organize the application and selection processes for the many pre- and post-graduate fellowships to which students apply, and help the students create strong personal statements and overall application packages. Public service tutors raise awareness of all the incredible opportunities for public service on campus and beyond, and help students explore summer opportunities and careers that promote the public interest. There are also tutors who create and maintain the house website and who run the process for student housing assignments.
As a tutor, you’ll likely do some combination of a few of these roles. Most tutors advise students in their primary academic or professional school areas, and also take on one or more of the other areas of specialization.
Sophomore Advising
One of the most important tutor responsibilities is serving as an adviser to a group of six or seven Cabot sophomores. In late August, you will be paired up with this group of sophomores, and you will be their primary academic adviser until they declare their concentrations at the end of the fall semester. Sometimes, the sophomores are interested in the same subject matter that you study. But oftentimes, sophomores are not certain what concentration is best for them. So a big part of the advising relationship will be helping your sophomores explore their academic interests and make a decision as to what concentration fits them best. Your advising relationship with your sophomores, however, will be more than just academic advising; advisers help their advisees think through what extracurricular activities to do, what summer job to take, whether they want to study abroad, and a host of other things that come up in the students’ lives. The advising relationship also lasts through the sophomore spring semester, even though students have already declared their concentrations at that point. Tutors usually form close relationships with their sophomore advisees, and often report this focused advising experience as one of the most rewarding aspects of tutor life.
Meetings, Trainings, and Other Duties
There are several regularly scheduled meetings and responsibilities that are expected from tutors. Rakesh and Stephanie hold monthly house-wide open houses in their home, and tutors should come to those. It’s a great chance to get to meet and talk to students, and partake of the excellent food that the masters always provide. There are also mandatory monthly tutor meetings at the masters’ home, where we all touch base on events and happenings in the House. In late August, the college puts on a two- or three-day training for resident tutors from all of Harvard’s houses, and Cabot hosts its own daylong tutor orientation around the same time.
Tutors also facilitate weekly study breaks for their entryway, usually every Sunday evening. Although tutors plan many of these study breaks, each student room is also assigned at least one study break throughout the year. Study breaks are often avenues for culinary creativity on a budget—we’ve had smoothies, pancakes, s’mores, burritos, fondue, pies, and many themed study breaks, in addition to more traditional things like pizza or milk and cookies. Each year, many tutors also play an active role in selecting the next crop of tutors to join the house.
Three or four weekends a year, tutors are on “party duty.” This means that you and another tutor are in charge of the on-call emergency phone for the week, and are the point-people for responding to any emergencies that happen. (In the case of major emergencies, your job is to refer students to more expert help.) You also meet with any student suites that have signed up to have a party over the weekend, check in a few times throughout the night to make sure everyone is safe and under control, and if need be, shut down any unregistered or unsafe parties. If any Cabot student ends up at the hospital while you’re on party duty, you’ll need to go down to UHS to make sure he or she is alright.
Other Tutor Roles
Tutors are encouraged to be creative in thinking about how else they hope to contribute to house life. Many tutors hold weekly language tables in the dining hall or are active members of various Cabot House intramural sports teams. These forums are great opportunities to meet and bond with students. Tutors also regularly come up with fun house events for students. A few recent example are: a walking tour of Mt. Auburn cemetery, Halloween pumpkin carving, an outing to a free orchestral performance in Sanders Theater, a wine tasting, poetry reading evenings, an apple picking trip, and a presentation on a non-profit internet website that promotes social activism. In the past, tutors have also shared their talents at Senior Common Room dinners. In recent memory, a music Ph.D. tutor played a concert for the house, and another tutor who climbed Mt. Everest shared his experience in a multi-media presentation.
Challenges of Tutor Life
Being a tutor is not for everyone. There is a loss of a certain measure of privacy, as you should expect students to occasionally knock on your door at all hours of the day. If you prefer relative anonymity in your residential environment, you probably would not enjoy life as a tutor. Cabot becomes like a second family to those of us living there, and so we all expect to be involved in each other’s lives. When something bad happens to a member of the Cabot community, it affects us all.
At some point, every tutor will help students through particularly difficult times, which can be emotionally trying. Many students are fortunate enough to have no serious problems in college, but others face harder challenges, like a death in the family, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts, unsafe alcohol or drug use, sexual assault, or financial difficulties. As a tutor, you will need to be a source of strength, guidance, and empathy for students in these more difficult times. You will certainly not be the only person in the university helping students in these situations, and in fact your most important job is to connect students with other professionals and resources at the university better trained to help them. But, as the people who are most closely connected with students, tutors are often the first point of contact. In these situations, confidentiality is incredibly important, as is the ability to maturely and confidently help students navigate the situation.
Why People Love Being a Tutor at Cabot
Life as a resident tutor is transformative. It is enormously satisfying to develop strong relationships with students and help them thrive during such an important time in their lives. Tutors can play instrumental roles in big life choices, like helping a student feel comfortable coming out, or supporting a student who declares a concentration that fits her true passions but not those of her parents, or just listening to a student who needs an open ear. If you take pleasure in giving back to a community and helping others, you’ll probably find life as a tutor to be very rewarding.
Many tutors also find themselves changing for the better during their time at Cabot. Because you have advising relationships and long dining hall conversations with all kinds of students, you end up broadening your understanding of other academic fields, walks of life, and ways of thinking. You’re just as likely to sit down to dinner with a computer science concentrator as a literature major, and learning about all the amazing things students accomplish is both fascinating and humbling. The community of tutors is particularly special; it’s a built-in group of friends from different departments across the university. The tutors at Cabot really enjoy each other’s company; we throw each other surprise parties, have each other over for dinner, go skiing together, and count each other as good friends.
When you become a tutor at Cabot House, you gain a community that feels like a true family.