Reaching for the top is a strenuous, nonstop business so a brief break provides a rare opportunity to consider priorities, and the not unconnected problem of just who is or will become a leader. Caille Millner, an 18-year-old African American from San Jose, Ca., is keeping a journal on her experiences as she navigates her way through Harvard University where she is completing her first semester. Here is the fourth entry in her journal. Millner writes for YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about young people published by Pacific News Service.

PRIORITIES

A week before spring break, I was frantic. Like everyone else, I had two papers due, plus a test, plus an oral exam. On top of all that, people were breathing down my neck about "participation" in extracurricular activities, and then there was the hassle of trying to get ready to go on vacation.

Not too much vacation -- most of my teachers assigned lots of work over spring break (my English teacher expects us to read an 800-page book read before we got back).

I went to London. And I saw lots of pretty things and met lots of interesting people -- but the best thing I got out of my trip is that life at Harvard, life in America in general, is not the way to live.

We boast about our way of life, our standard of living. We think that if other people lived like us, they wouldn't have so many problems.

Americans do have the material things that make life more comfortable, but we don't have lives. We sacrifice those in order to get the gadgets that give us status -- the most successful Americans often don't even get to live in the homes they've spent their lives working to get. They live in hotels and airports instead.

Here at Harvard, where many students want to be the next generation of "most successful Americans," life moves at warp speed.

The European way of life is a little bit more forgiving. People walk instead of screeching at each other out their car windows. They go to parks. And the students are students, not mini-adults squeezing in a couple of classes along with a million other things.

I spent high school going from zero to 60 in three seconds. Forget smelling the roses -- I did so many things I didn't even know they were there.

And here I came into an environment with people who were just as bad. Friends stop by for timed conversations -- "I wanted to say hi but I can only stay for five minutes because I have to go to the language lab and get to ballet practice by seven." People in leadership positions here have day planners the size of suitcases with a space for every minute.

There is no room for intellectual growth in such a place. How can you grow without time to reflect? How can you figure out who you are if all you care about is where you're going?

In London, someone asked me what I'd gotten out of my first semester in college. I couldn't say anything. I took some classes and stressed over them, and threw myself into extracurricular activities and stressed over them even more, but the only thing I feel I actually got was high blood pressure.

It's almost the end of my second semester, but that doesn't mean I can't change. Being superwoman is too harsh on my life. "Priorities" is my new operative word. I've decided that my top priority is to be happy.

The common assumption here is that you should spend time doing homework (to get good grades and thus a good job) or in a business-oriented extracurricular activity (making contacts for the real world!) as opposed to enjoying the moment.

And it's true. Running around like Speed Racer got me into Harvard. If I hustle for another four years, I will probably be on the fast track to American success.

I woke up. It took me awhile, but I woke up. I don't want success if it's going to kill me. I'd actually like to enjoy my time in college. I'm going to walk to class instead of run. And as I walk, I'm going to savor the weather instead of running through a million things to do in my head. I'm going to read a book that's not for class.

Does my new plan sound trivial? It could, but I think it just might save my sanity.

LEADERS

Boston Magazine calls Henry Louis Gates, Jr. the "Head Negro in Charge" and ignites a firestorm. Black leaders from around the country blow up at the magazine, the insensitive press, at white America in general.

Worse, the magazine describes Gates as "chief interpreter of the black experience for white America".

Obviously some people still don't understand that 22 million black Americans cannot be one homogeneous mass -- cannot have one experience that can be expressed by one human being. And to call Gates -- an academic who studies black history -- the leader of the black race is to misrepresent both him and black people.

The question of who will lead the black community -- even the question of who is now leading it -- is very much up for debate. Because black people are moving in so many different directions, it is unlikely that one leader, even several leaders, will ever be able to speak a message that captures the hearts and souls of all black people.

Black students at Harvard are, without question, part of the "Talented Tenth," W.E.B. DuBois' term for the most talented of our race, the ones who are supposed to lead the rest. According to the media, we are also the ones who will make headlines for race relations by "interpreting" the black experience. The truth is that some of us will be "interpreters." But we won't be leaders.

Black students here are majoring in economics, government, and pre-med biochemistry. We are thinking about law school, business school, and investment banking, planning careers that are practical and lucrative. We will be the success stories of the black community. Not the leaders.

Leaders aren't made by an institution, an expectation, or the media itself. The people themselves anoint their own leaders -- even if they aren't palatable. Louis Farrakhan is arguably one of the most powerful black leaders today, but the media won't touch him, even though he's given lots of black people something media-approved leaders could not -- hope.

Recently, there have been complaints that Harvard's African-American Studies department is not doing much to help the process of making leaders. They teach and go on book tours and drive around in fancy cars, but they're really not in contact with the black community. In other words, the media's "leaders" haven't been leading.

What the media, and much of white America, do not realize is that their "black leaders" may not mean anything to the people they ostensibly lead.

Two generations ago, the Talented Tenth began leading black people through a civil rights struggle that gave this generation a future. But as the first to grow up in the post-Civil Rights era, we take it for granted. We assume that we will always be able to live as citizens in our own country. And because we are privileged and may not have a lot of contact with blacks who are not, we don't take the issue of leadership seriously. Therefore we don't think about the rumblings just beneath the surface of society.

In the meantime, others -- people who have not been to Harvard and who are not concerned with making seven-figure salaries -- will take up the torch of leadership. And white America will get afraid, because they didn't say that these people could lead. But that's how leaders are made.