Princeton students are busier than God: Yahweh managed to get everything done in six days, but we need eight. Princetonians have the benefit of the usual seven-day cycle but to make room for more party time we’ve added our very own collegiate Sabbath, “Saturday Night,” which is an eighth day in its own right, complete with bacchantic rituals and Dionysus-worship that would have even the syphilitic Nietzsche tapping his toes to the tune.
Yet I’ve heard it said among undergraduates that there are three components to Princeton life: sleeping socializing and studying. You can have any two of three. Take your pick.
Since some columnists have been moaning about all the strains on their time recently, let’s evaluate a few options for squeezing a few more minutes out of each day at Princeton University:
- Don’t check Facebook or Wikipedia. Block them from your computer; in fact, use that blocking function that makes you set a password, only make your roommate set the password. This could possibly lead to hostage situations down the line, but, “Greater love hath no man than this: to lay down one’s life for a friend’s time management techniques.”
Petition Professor Alexander Nehamas to start a Department of Television Studies. Then we can watch “St. Elsewhere” until our eyeballs pop out, and we’ll receive a bachelor of arts degree for analyzing Pepsi commercials.
- If the class is curved, and if nobody hands in any assignments, then everyone should get a B-plus. So the next time you’re in a 167-person lecture hall, suggest a normal form game that would result in the maximum social efficiency for absolute laziness. Bonus points if you can write this up as an econ thesis. (Problem: Prisoners will rebel.)
- At this stage in his career, Professor Katz should have discovered — or devised — the maximally efficient language, which would be ideally adapted to undergraduate life. Notice that we have shortened “Wawa” to “Waa.” This is faster to say. Can we not agree that “naaam” means “Can’t now, too busy, but we’ll text-conference at two?”
- Fly around the world. If you keep going west fast enough you can pack a few more hours into every day. Granted, you will have difficulties making an oral presentation from Ulaanbaatar, but that’s what Skype is for. You won’t need an extension till Tuesday: Just cross the International Dateline and finish your preparation with plenty of time left to watch “30 Rock.” (A big shout-out to Jules Verne on this one.)
- Make Google write your papers. They already do arithmetic, research, read books, dial the phone and take calls for you. Call it GooglePlagiarism. (Note: Consult your lawyer before using this option, as legal repercussions could ensue.)
- We need motorcyles. Walking between buildings takes too long. Walking is for the squirrels. Our endowment is slowly recovering above the $12 billion level — let’s liquidate and buy some Harleys to get to class.
- Time, as Einstein taught us, is relative. Time moves fastest in New York and slowest in Wyoming. Most of our problem is due to location. In theory, we could set ourselves up in Wyoming and gain an extra three hours per day. (Problem: cows.)
- Put a Joe Wilson pop-up doll in each classroom to alert the professors when their lectures have run over time by half an hour.
- Don’t sleep. Sleep is for the dead.
Some of these are slightly infeasible, and a few would be really expensive. In my own life, I find that simply asking, “What did I log on for?” when I’m at nytimes.com, facebook.com or Wikipedia.org usually saves me two or more hours per day. Shutting down my laptop while I’m reading makes me even more productive. Reading Kant while lying on the futon is very unproductive, but quite comfortable, after one lapses into dogmatic slumber. And for all you Red Bull fans, last semester, I abstained from caffeine for a month before midterms. That was a buzz.
Or, you could take classes you enjoy in subjects you love, take up causes you care about and play intramural sports, just for the thrill of the game. It’s not really how much you’re doing as why you’re doing it that counts: If you truly love your courses, you’ll get greater marginal benefit from the cost of sleep deprivation. And it doesn’t take an economist to figure that one out.
Brendan Carroll is a philosophy major from New York. He can be reached at btcarrol@princeton.edu.
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