Eyes wide open

The pennants flew in the wind as we crossed the pathway lined with alumni keeping tempo with their “rahs” and “sisses” while we marched, our parents sending us off into the distance with a teary wave.

Thus began freshman week, when every night was a chance to have an unforgettable moment. We succumbed to our wild, free-spirited fantasies of what we thought college would be like, with the leave-no-regrets partying and the social networking that seemed to move too fast to remember people’s names.

Then came shopping period, when we scheduled a ridiculous number of classes, precepts and labs in our over-zealous excitement to take the most enlightening courses — ones that we believed could change our lives forever.

And when the opportunity arose, we signed up for clubs and dance teams and theater productions even when we knew we wouldn’t be able to handle it all.

Back then, we had that look — the “freshman” look of over-eagerness and adorable enthusiasm.

However, during this first week of spring semester, it seems that a good portion of the freshman class has lost that unsuspecting sparkle that once characterized it. Fewer smiles at the dining hall table, weary gazes despite having just returned from Intersession; textbooks and calculators sprawled out for studying even though we’d only had one class so far. After having been a bit disheartened by fall transcripts and adequately bruised by the infamous curve, it seems that many of us have lost a bit of the excitement that had defined our first few weeks of college. And now we’re beginning to think that maybe our passions and our grades are not as compatible. We’re faced with the decision of whether we need to sacrifice our interests for grades or just accept that we might not do fantastically in the classes that may in fact be our favorites.

I’m brought back to a few nights ago at dinner, when I was sitting with a friend of mine who didn’t do so spectacularly first semester — a situation with which I’m sure many of us can sympathize. She told us about the religion and cultural history class that had managed to yield a grand total of four students. We immediately focused on what would happen to her grade in a class of this size. We speculated how much of a hit her academic record would take if she made any slip-ups reminiscent of those during our first semester. We failed to respond with encouraging remarks about how it was sure to be a fun class with a lot of interaction with the professor and the three other students, as we may have done had this been our first semester. Instead of focusing on the positive, we let our individual bad experiences veer us away from the innocent optimism with which we had originally entered Princeton. The truth, however, is that while my friend would need to be more attentive to her grades, there are still upsides to being in a class of four. For example, her work would get an incredible amount of attention from the very undergraduate program professors that had attracted her to Princeton in the first place.

The reality of it is that many of us were used to being at the top of our class in high school. We were the valedictorians, the honor-roll kids, the varsity athletes or the music whizzes. And this first semester has taught us that maybe we need to concede a few of these titles. Perhaps we need to admit that maybe we won’t get the A that we had originally been so confident about. First semester was an adjustment period — a time to improve, just as all future semesters will train us to do as well. And while we are no longer as unfoundedly confident or naive, all that has happened is that we’ve gotten one step closer to understanding how Princeton works. Just talk to any upperclassman, and they’ll tell you that much harder things will come up on your road to graduation, like junior papers and senior theses. This experience has simply brought us a bit closer to our goals.

In the end, we really do have to remember that bright-eyed kid equipped with the cute backpack and the swinging Tiger-themed lanyard — that kid who was anything but disheartened or disillusioned by the thought of defeat and disappointment. We need to approach every opportunity as romantically enriching lest we leave this place with a heartbreaking outlook on what success really is. Our attitudes may have shifted in the wake of our reality checks, but our excitement should never change. We need to make it our goal to have that cliche college experience of discovering ourselves rather than letting the dive into the muck keep us from learning how to get out of it and strive on.

Isabella Gomes is a freshman from Irvine, Calif. She can be reached at igomes@princeton.edu.N.. She can be reached at mjerkins@princeton.edu.