An incomplete education

I apologize for this self-indulgent column. After four years of cranking out columns for the 'Prince' every two weeks, this will be my last one. Nostalgia being the last refuge of the graduating senior, I hope I will be forgiven my musings.

The formula for last columns calls for sharing wisdom mined from four years of hewing Old Nassau's rocks. I certainly have some: Don't sign up for 8:30 classes. You won't go to them. Take a Great Books sequence from the Humanities Council (I recommend HUM 205-207). Every other book ever written pays homage to these masterpieces. Take ART 101 and MUS 103 and don't P/D/F them — knowing a bit about art and music makes you a more interesting person. Immerse yourself in as many activities as possible that involve large groups of people — Princeton becomes very lonely very quickly. Your friends, lovers and nights debating the nature of good and evil are more important than your grades on problem sets. Don't rely on the 'Street' for meeting eligible members of the opposite sex. Be in a play or a dance performance. Write a novel. Realize that when you write columns on your old high school that are posted on the web, people from your old high school can access them and start e-mail discussion groups on how much they don't like you.

The formula also includes recalling fond memories. I do have some dashing naked and ecstatic around Holder Courtyard in the Nude Olympics, tearing up while singing Brahms' "Requiem" or Bach's "B-minor Mass," kissing on the golf course at night before I got a single and my sex life became more boring, or waking early and strolling through the fog-bound Gothic buildings, pondering the universe and seeking the truth, like so many generations before.

But there are plenty bad of ones as well. I've lived through too many vapid nights at the 'Street.' I've been sorely disappointed with just how anti-intellectual Princeton is — who would have thought I'd be snickered at for knowing answers here, just as I was in seventh grade math class by the 'cool' boys delighting in their own ignorance? I've failed miserably in my love affairs, and I don't think my friendships are even that strong. For many "Organization Kids," work always comes first. There's an odd obsession with seeing people as means to an end here. It's a depressing prospect. I can count on one hand the number of people who I think will bother to keep in touch with me after a year.

When I spent a term in Australia, I missed Princeton so much it hurt. At least I thought I was missing Princeton. What I was really missing, though, were people who'd been through a formative experience with me and who knew me and loved me for that. It was an irrational homesickness, though, coming back, I realized I had no formative experiences here. As I've written before, no one from my past life in Indiana has ever shown up at Princeton. I could have reinvented myself anyway I wanted. But I don't think I did. I am the exact same person I was when I came here. A bit more mellow, perhaps, after two years of partially Princeton-induced depression made me no longer expect that everything I wanted in life would deliver itself, gift-wrapped, to my door. My alcohol tolerance is higher, and that's about it. So what is there to miss?

In my first column for the 'Prince,' I wrote about my short-lived stage career and how seeing a Broadway show made me realize how much I gave up for a life of books instead of a life of tap shoes, sequins and spotlights. The sweaty dancers on stage had pushed harder for their dreams. I lacked that determination. "The most wonderful thing in the world is to want something so badly that nothing else matters, to throw yourself completely into the pursuit, and then, finally, to achieve it," I wrote.

The problem with Princeton is that I haven't had many experiences that brought me close to that "most wonderful thing." In high school I pushed so hard to get into colleges like Princeton that I worked myself into a frenzy slaving over chemistry equations until the connections forged in my brain. I haven't worked as hard here. I've felt a certain academic joy plunging into the Bible, Milton, Joyce and Dostoevsky, but this place isn't as stressful, and there isn't a specific goal I've been working for. Since I'm less close to that raw nerve of energy, I haven't felt the same abandon of throwing myself into a pursuit — except for writing my novel this fall.

Since I was also doing a thesis for the Woodrow Wilson School, I knew I'd have to start my thesis for the Creative Writing Department early. Over fall break, I locked myself in my room and wrote for 14 hours a day, emerging only to go to the 'Wa and the bathroom. I fell into a trance as the words which had been colliding in my head for years slowly worked themselves onto the page. Six-thousand words a day. My eyes glazed over and my wrists ached, but I was so glad to feel the joy of throwing myself completely into my passion again that I didn't care.

But that's the closest I've come to a formative experience here, and I experienced it alone, barely connected to the concept of "Princeton." My whole life, I've never spent three consecutive years at a school. My term abroad means that trend has continued. It's a mixed blessing. I can pack up and move on easily, but it keeps me from forming deep ties. After all, they'll just be lost, right? I had hoped I could change that here. But the combination of my own personality flaws and the lonely nature of Princeton means that I haven't changed that much. So yet again, I feel I have trod lightly and lonely through a place, growing comfortable but not growing particularly deep roots. It's time to move on.

(Laura Vanderkam is a Wilson School major from Granger, IN. She can be reached at laurav@princeton.edu)