Celebrating success

At Princeton, winners of well-respected scholarships like the Rhodes and Marshall are written up in the 'Prince' and featured on the homepage. Winners of the class prizes are awarded at opening exercises so that bright-eyed freshmen can all think that they will be receiving those awards next year. Yet other than in these extreme situations, sharing and celebrating academic success is generally frowned upon. I cannot imagine many situations where a freshman can proudly announce an A-minus on his or her first writing seminar paper or a junior can celebrate his or her successful junior paper. One typical response is to explain away the success as a result of circumstance, declaring that their professor is an easy grader, their major less challenging, or that they probably already studied the material in another course. Another is to defend one’s own grades in the context of other choices — “I’d like to see her keep those grades up if she were a varsity athlete” or “It’s easy to do well when you’re only taking four courses."

I do not mean to characterize every student as an entirely self-interested and unsupportive friend. I think we all have dealt with the success of a friend in positive and negative ways. Instead, I am commenting on the underlying, University-wide attitude that does not allow for students to be proud of their success and to be acknowledged accordingly. In some sense, success should be its own reward. If it was possible to maintain an entirely neutral attitude then I might agree. However, neutrality naturally leads to negativity as it requires students to conceal their success and eventually reveal it in awkward and undesirable settings — and thus it is not a realistic option.

It surprises me that Princeton students adopt this negative attitude so quickly. Most of us were on the receiving end of negativity directed at our success in high school, as we were the ones getting the highest grades, winning awards and getting into top colleges. Even now, when some of us are outside the Orange Bubble, we act assuming a negative response, answering “in New Jersey” or ashamedly muttering Princeton when asked where we go to school. Why then, when we get back on campus, are we so susceptible to the same negative attitudes of which we hate to be on the receiving end?

Competition is one explanation: Any success that you have is one fewer possible success available for me. I think this argument applies to students in the same course. It is never enjoyable to hear that the friend that you have been studying with scored a full letter grade higher than you. However, this competitiveness cannot explain the entire problem because courses only intersect a small portion of the time. Jealousy of any success is another explanation but does not explain why people are willing to hear about the top accolades and not smaller ones. I suppose there is a feeling that I may as well be happy for the Rhodes Scholar because that ship sailed after freshman fall, but I could have gotten that A just as well as he could have. Again, I believe this explains some of the situation, but my chances at the Shapiro Prize were also gone after freshman fall, so the same lack of jealously should apply.

The largest problem is that the existing attitude on campus means that there is no good way to bring up success. A successful student worries that being proud of his or her accomplishment would be mistaken for boasting. A generally interested friend may worry that asking either embarrasses his or her friend or accidentally makes this friend share a less successful academic venture. As a university community, it should be part of our mission to acknowledge and admire academic success, and to create this attitude we must take it upon ourselves to be intentionally positive.

Successful students should be able to discuss their accomplishments without worrying about being mocked or embarrassed. Friends should be supportive and encouraging and not attempt to contextualize others’ accomplishments in an attempt to make them less worthwhile. The University should acknowledge all the honors it bestows on students by announcing Shapiro Prize winners, posting departmental honors on department websites and placing writing seminar essay winners somewhere more conspicuous than the writing seminar website. No one should ever be ashamed of their success. Let’s start now to make it that way.

Simon Fox Krauss is a computer science major from Haverton, PA. He can be reached at skrauss@princeton.edu.