When you write a substantial piece of work that takes a semester or more (like a junior tutorial paper or a senior thesis), the expectations for originality are different because of the length of the essay you'll write and because of your level of expertise in the field. As you gain experience in your concentration, your knowledge of the major ideas in your chosen field will expand, you will develop your ability to ask more rigorous questions in that field, and you will be able to answer those questions in ways that are original not just to you but to your readers. At this point in your college career, you'll have had the opportunity to learn who the major thinkers are in your field and how to identify the important literature on what research has taken place on your topic. You'll be able to find the most important current scholarship on a topic or the most recent findings related to your research question. Your expertise, along with the time you'll have to devote to the project, means that you will be well-equipped to say something original about your topic.
Even when you write these longer papers, it's still important to understand what it means to say something original. Academic work is very specialized, and scholars build theories and ideas based on the knowledge and ideas that they have studied. In practical terms, this means that ideas evolve slowly, and every original idea doesn't have to be E=mc2 or Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." While there's nothing wrong with hoping to discover a new element to add to the periodic table or trying to figure out the true identity of Shakespeare, it's more likely that your ideas will be original in any of the following ways.
You might discover, in your study of a particular topic, that no one has considered a question or problem that interests you. Or you might bring new information or a new perspective to a question that others have asked. For example, you might look at newly released government documents to consider a question about how the Reagan administration shaped economic policies. While the question may have been asked before, the newly available data will allow you to provide a fresh, original perspective. Similarly, while many people have written about Shakespeare’s plays, you might find that comparing a new production to a more traditional version would bring you a fresh perspective on the play.
Sometimes collecting and analyzing your own data will provide an original take on a topic. For example, if you were writing a senior thesis in a lab science or social science concentration, you might collect and analyze your own data in pursuit of an answer to a question that other scholars have attempted to answer before with different types of data. In psychology, for example, you might conduct an experiment under the supervision of a professor and then analyze your data. In a sociology or anthropology course, you might conduct a series of interviews and analyze them in order to answer a question in a new way.
As appealing as it might seem to discover an entirely new idea, it's just as valuable to add a new step or a new way of thinking to an idea that someone else has already presented. It's also valuable—and original—to consider ideas in relation to each other that have not been considered or connected to each other in this way before.
Whether you're working on a short assignment or a semester-long project, remember that even in the context of all the thinking that has come before yours, you are always capable of bringing your own unique point of view to a paper. In fact, you're doing your own thinking all the time, long before you start writing—in class discussion, in the dining hall, and in your instructor's office hours. When you bring sources into the equation, you're able to go beyond your gut reactions and feelings ("capitalism is good" or “capitalism is bad”) to develop more nuanced ideas ("capitalism does a better job of creating incentives for innovation than other systems" or "a capitalist society cannot protect the most vulnerable"). Sources also introduce you to competing arguments and interpretations and help to lay the groundwork for your own thinking. When you read what has already been written on a particular topic, or when you analyze data that has already been produced in addition to new data, you become more qualified to contribute to the conversation.
Many students tackling college-level writing for the first time find the expectations of college writing new and difficult. There are resources to help you as you embark on your writing assignments at Harvard, and you should feel free to make use of them. Writing Center tutors, Departmental Writing Fellows, and House tutors are all excellent resources. The Harvard Writing Project publishes a number of guides to writing in different fields, and the Writing Center offers general writing resources in addition to individual conferences.
Before you can use sources effectively, you need to know how to locate them, how to know if they are reliable, and how to distinguish clearly between the ideas in a source and your own ideas. The information on this site provides an introduction to the research process, including how and where to find sources, how to decide if a source is reliable and useful, how to use sources accurately and effectively in your papers both to strengthen your own thinking and writing and to avoid plagiarism, and finally, how to integrate source material into your writing and how to cite sources responsibly.