Deja-U

We called a cab and headed to a party in an apartment belonging to someone I didn’t know. The guy wasn’t home, so we bought some greasy slices of pizza and hung out behind a convenience store. Afterward, he called us, and we headed up to the apartment. Four years of road trips have left me with a good mindset for crashing random parties, but I was wholly unprepared for what I saw. This apartment, many miles and years removed from Prospect Avenue, was filled with Princeton alums. I didn’t remember most of their names, but I knew their faces. Most were a few years older than I, three years into the working world, seemingly light years away from where your average Princeton student is now, yet obviously still in contact with Princeton life.

I felt like a freshman walking into Ivy Club for the first time, scared silent by pretty girls, casual glances and perceived social persecution. The night went well, though. It was funny, awkward and strangely refreshing. I had a lot of hey-I-remember-your-face-what’s-your-name and wow-he-really-let-himself-go moments. I had a funny conversation with a girlfriend of a buddy I used to hang out with — one of those legendary dudes you hear stories about, a man who kept a working hot tub in his common room his senior year. We reminisced about parties in that guy’s room. She had been a senior; I’d been a wide-eyed frosh. She works in human resources now for a law firm.

There were many drunken slaps on the back, questions about how so-and-so is doing. I think I heard the phrase “Stay in college” as many times as I heard “Hello,” and it scared me quite a bit, because I’m used to hearing men in their 50s say that. Maybe with a “Do you want to enjoy your life? Then don’t become a lawyer” sprinkled in there for flavor. I’m not sure what was more troubling — my initial impressions of the party or the realization that my old friends had transformed into my uncle.

Yet the party got me thinking about things. And recent interactions with other friends have made think more on our differences in age and maturity. College is supposed to be the place where differences in age disappear — and it does, for the most part, but Princeton is too small and too old for a little bit of hierarchy not to remain. As we count birthdays, and as our degrees may lead to jobs and mortgages and paying for kindergarten, it is no longer our ages that separate us, but our mindsets and goals.

I have a friend who’s been dating the same girl since freshman year — of high school. He and I are not thinking about the same things right now. All I can think about is which continent to go hang my hat in for a bit, while he’s been humming “All the Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” going on a year now. I know another girl who’s finishing grad school this year and is so freaked out about being 26 and unmarried that she starts talking about babies every time she goes on a date.

That party interested me for many reasons. It wasn’t so long ago that I’d spent a significant amount of time with some of the people in that room, yet there they were, revisiting their college days, looking slightly haggard, all grown up. I wondered what they thought of me, if they even registered my presence in the room. While it seemed that everyone I talked to had landed on their feet whether they’d gone to Wall Street or film school, no one seemed that certain or relaxed about the future, which makes sense in retrospect but surprised me at the time.

We come out of here waving our degrees like kindergarteners showing off a drawing of a T-Rex — and with good reason, I suppose. While it may be common sense, I’m only just coming to terms with the fact that my diploma might not be the skeleton key I dreamed of when I got my admission letter. I’m not scared of the economy. My parents still have a basement I can go home to and a refrigerator I can hang my drawings on. What scares me more is becoming your uncle.

Felipe Cabrera is a comparative literature major from Naperville, Ill. He can be reached at fcabrera@princeton.edu.