The point of college

In Isabella Gomes’s Feb. 22 column, “Ready, Set, Draw,” she explains what she understands the point of her college education to be, halfway through her freshman year: “learning to identify ourselves through our associations with others ... Never as much as we do now, we have come to understand that the people we identify with essentially form our identity.”

This makes me really, deeply sad. Yes, your friends are a large part of who you are. They should be. That’s the point of friendships. However, I understand these relationships as directed from the inside out: Who you are determines who you’re friends with, but who you’re friends with does not determine who you are. I understand how easy it is to feel as Isabella does, especially as a freshman, when you’re new, you’re adrift, and nobody knows you, least of all yourself.

But that’s why you’re here.

I have an ongoing conversation with a close friend about how college makes us feel ridiculously self-centered. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I worry about is myself: whether or not I’m late, what I’ll eat, what I’ll wear, when I’ll get my work done. But I have to be my first concern. I’m alone here. If I don’t look out for myself, no one will.

The same things that make college feel so lonely and isolating are exactly what make us so dependent on our connections with others. We’re away from home, cut out of our contexts. And with this school’s social system, it’s easy to reduce people to their affiliations. How often has someone been described to you in terms of what eating club they’re in? “He’s a junior in Cap,” your friend says about someone she just hooked up with, as if that tells you anything you need to know at all about whether he’s going to text her back or ignore her in the dining hall.

This is part of the problem with growing up, in general. You keep having to move around, figuring out how to adjust to new environments, searching for the confidence we feel when we’re at home, surrounded by the familiar. Rainer Maria Rilke, writer of poetry and eternally quotable letters, once wrote to a 19-year-old poet that this feeling of security is what makes us, as young adults, remember childhood so fondly: “Don’t think that the great love which was once granted to you, when you were a boy, has been lost,” he said. “I believe that that love remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life.”

For me, at least, this is the point of my undergraduate education. College should be about “inner work.” It should be about what’s happening inside of you, as you’re joining an a cappella group or an intramural team, or even realizing that you want to spend your life helping others. There should be periods of deep solitude scattered in between two-hour-long meals with friends or volunteer tutoring. You’re not at this school to party hard. You’re not at this school to join the dance troupe that feeds into your favorite eating club. And you’re not, really, here to make friends.

It’s so cliche, but I’m just going to say it: Nothing will make you happy until you’re happy with yourself. You could room with a neat freak who likes to party and doesn’t mind sleeping on the couch when you bring a hottie home, and you could still be miserable. You could spend all your time helping those less fortunate than you, and you could still be miserable. You could be much smarter than people around you; you could struggle to make friends and spend your weekends perfecting your homework and then, triumphantly, get accepted into one of the best schools in the country. And you could still be miserable.

I’ve spent a lot of time alone recently and I feel better, kinder and happier than I have in a while. I’m not going to tell you how I did it, because I’m not exactly sure, and, more importantly, that’s what your alone-work is for. That’s why you have to spend some time in a library, on a walk or in bed, thinking about yourself and just yourself. Not your midterms, not your arch sing, not your summer plans, but whether or not you’re happy and whether or not you mean it.

Susannah Sharpless is a sophomore from Indianapolis, Ind. She can be reached at ssharple@princeton.edu.