Life after high school: Not all memory lanes lead to Princeton

The Class of 2004 has arrived, and I am still the only one from my high school at Princeton. Ever.

Attempting to change these statistics and recruit more students to apply to Princeton, I drove down to Muncie, Ind., this August to the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and the Humanities — my state's only public residential school. Armed with a wad of glossy brochures, I stood in front of the adolescent mass and suddenly felt a fit of nostalgia.

I have very mixed memories of the place. Depressed at the dullness of my first high school where it took two months to get through "A Separate Peace," I moved down to Muncie and found myself in someone's idea of an interesting psychology experiment. What happens when you put 250 bright but eccentric and frequently maladjusted kids together in a hormone and stress-crazed environment?

Scary things sometimes.

Two years earlier, three students committed suicide, one employing the melodrama of shooting himself in front of the school on prom night. A year earlier, a girl swallowed enough sleeping pills to put her in a coma. My own year had its crises — people who escape the confines of the building during free time at night would climb on the freight trains and ride through town. One girl, desperate to make our strictly enforced curfew, climbed through a stopped train only to have it start and drag her under.

When we slept six hours, we were lucky, but the Academy, as we called it, was also the time of my life. I read and thought more than I ever believed possible. Groups of us would wander down to the White River to sit on the banks and talk about life. We'd climb on top of nearby Ball State University buildings, smoke illicit cigarettes in the parking garage or rise early to trudge through the snow to the Sunshine Cafe a mile or so down the road. At night, amorous couples — nearly thwarted by the strict sex-segregation of the dorms — crept into the music building's practice rooms, which locked from the inside. People crowded into the school's common lounges, developing an extended family entirely different from the ones we left.

I drove back down there this summer, parked the car and stepped out into the hottest day of the summer. Wilting already, I traveled my well-worn steps down to the river and passed the nursing home, the gentlemen's clubs and the general Muncie riff-raff.

I walked along the railroad bridge, the weeds and graffiti always the same. But the new "No Trespassing" sign made my stomach turn, reminding me of the train accident my senior year. The girl survived, but lost her leg while her friends watched in horror as the train dragged her along. I remember a boy describing how he ripped off his shirt and used it to keep her from bleeding to death.

The place has its memories.

But things were different this time. People stared at me. I was too dressed up, looking too foreign there among the Ball State students. I went to the Academy to give my talk and I tried to connect. Looking at the faces — were they really born in 1984? — I wanted to say how much the place is still a part of me.

But they wouldn't have it.

I go to Princeton, and that made me different enough. Things came out wrong. There was near shock when I said applicants usually scored better than a 1350 on the SAT. Horror when I mentioned the $30,000 price tag. General skepticism when I talked about my eating club.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

So I'm in an odd place. The school that made me whatever I am no longer recognizes me as one of them. So it goes — U.S. News rankings and all. But I keep wishing someone will actually decide to come here. There's always hope for the Class of 2005. Laura Vanderkam is a Woodrow Wilson School major from Granger, Ind. She can be reached at laurav@princeton.edu.