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David Ellis, of Cambridge and Dunster House, was once a member of the Yale College class of 1997. He deferred his acceptance for a year, however, and some bush-walking and hitchhiking all over Australia gave him the "warped perspective that it wouldn't be weird to go to college five minutes from home." Since Harvard had also accepted him the first time, the second time around it was a "safety school"--an ideal place for Ellis to continue pursuing his interests wherever they might lead.
At Harvard, the biochemistry concentrator has welcomed surprises. During the cattle call of freshman registration, a crew coach picked his "six-feet tall, beanpole frame" out of the line, and Ellis eventually became a member of the varsity heavyweight team. "Shared pain is a profound way of meeting people," he says. "You become close to the team for having gone through so much together--any success you have along the way is only a bonus."
Because Ellis may spend up to 30 hours a week in crew practice, laboratory sessions in organic chemistry had to be scheduled during the late-night hours. Even so, during his first year he joined the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, an undergraduate choir that has taken him to the Kennedy Center and to England on tour. "Rushing from crew practice to choir rehearsal wasn't easy," he recalls. "Sometimes I couldn't shower in between, and no one at Collegium appreciated that."
Although he has been interested in science as a discipline and has thought about a career in medicine, Ellis admits that he also harbors a deep love for writing. "My dream job would be travel journalist, or science writer for the New York Times. Expressing yourself in your native language is the most important thing you can learn to do--if you do it well, it is a great joy."
After graduation, Ellis will spend a year at Cambridge University on a Fiske Scholarship, studying science and health-care policy. Beyond that, anything is possible, including a consulting job, a second year at Cambridge working toward a degree, or "time off" to train for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
But Ellis doesn't seem too anxious about the immediate future. He even has time to attend Professor Robert Levin's class on chamber music. "I'm not really enrolled in the class," he says. "I just come to listen."
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