There’s a rare kind of academic community at this camp. The work is the raison d’etre of the program. But beyond that, a community entirely composed of academically gifted students provides a support system and a community where academic work revolves around an intense kind of fun and exploration. The kids also pursue quirky hobbies and traditions, and they do it with zeal.
Often I found myself feeling like I was back at Princeton. CTY students are bright, and they seek out a place that lets them steer their education in new amd challenging directions. At Princeton, though, something very real looms beyond Nassau Street, and we have to pay attention to practical considerations like GPAs and careers. Simply put, the modern university education has as much to do with preparing students for the “real world” (or graduate, medical, law or business school first) as it does with the traditional notions of liberal arts and exploration.
Fortunately, this real-world atmosphere is not all-consuming. We, too, have a happily quirky environment at Princeton replete with unusual hobbies. Just this week, “skateboard jousting” made the front page of this paper, and I don’t foresee Quidditch gaining the mainstream approval of Olympic status anytime soon. In these ways, I sense the same “always something new under the sun” vibe that I did this summer.
Princeton honestly aims for the lofty ideals of a liberal education, and with some success. Theses and JPs carve out time for seniors and juniors to have the true liberal arts experience of following an intellectual passion to the point of exhaustion. Every Princeton student who comes here knows that they will have to write one, and most of us probably like the idea in principle (if, understandably, not during senior year). We pour our time into clubs with every conceivable mission statement, which the University encourages and supports. These are our passions, and this is just one way we pursue them.
Nevertheless, the plain realities intrude, and we have to consider GPAs and grad school. That’s not to say that our concerns have stamped out our intellectual drive. If given the option, I suspect many of us would welcome the opportunity to stick out our necks more often through challenging courses of study, or spend more time at guest lectures on topics of tangential interest to us. But time considerations don’t really allow that. It’s rare to see students reading anything — novels, non-fiction or newspapers — for fun. I, for one, miss that. Our days are instead filled with almost superhuman loads of course reading and/or problem sets. Their worth, and the education they comprise, remains unquestioned and invaluable for life. But something is missing.
Ironically, it seems that chasing down academic excellence leaves us less time to follow our intellectual desires. Even consider the easy opportunities to stray from the curriculum: optional reading. In classes with it, I suspect it gets scant attention from most students who might enjoy reading it at leisure. After all, those are the courses we expressed interest in, so optional reading should be of interest.
To be perfectly clear, these decisions are not unpardonable sins. Grades and practical considerations for the future rightfully occupy our attention. It would be irresponsible to ignore these factors and follow our whims to nowhere in particular. At times I’ve even disagreed with the University’s refusal to recognize these LPP (life post-Princeton) realities — think grade deflation. Both our communities and our own happiness would likely suffer if we ignored the real world. But a little perspective can’t hurt.
Today, though, we just don’t have the time for all of the intellectual debates and pursuits we wish we could have. What I took away from this summer is very different from the constellations I could rattle off after my summer as a student at CTY. I remembered that we’re at Princeton because we love to learn, and it’s just a question of trying to balance work with the other kind of learning. I think this struggle within ourselves is not unique to Princeton, or college in general, but that it will be a lifelong one. Still, a campus with this many high-achievers can undoubtedly juggle both sides and find a reasonable balance between the two worthy goals we come here to reach.
Brian Lipshutz is a sophomore from Lafayette Hill, Pa. He can be reached at lipshutz@princeton.edu.
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