Faking nonchalance

It’s exhausting because it’s disingenuous. It’s setting a standard that is impossible to achieve. I used to wonder a lot what I was doing wrong, because I was working so hard to reach the same heights other people did without having to put in as much time or effort. I was disheartened to think that people who wrote a paper in two hours could produce the same work I could after working two days. But as I got to know people better throughout the year, I found out that their situations weren’t as rosy as they initially seemed. The paper that supposedly took two hours was actually extensively researched and edited. That ORF 245 project took a few hours a day over the entirety of winter break. People were working, they just weren’t owning up to it.

I understand where those people are coming from. The nonchalant attitude is a safety net: in case their grades aren’t what they expected, they can always fall back on the excuse that they just didn’t try hard enough. Though we all know that bad grades can be a result of a multitude of different reasons — from just having an off-day to an unfamiliar or unexpected grading process — it’s easier to just say that you didn’t try that hard, suggesting that if you had tried your hardest you would’ve gotten that A. It seems “cooler” that your bad grade was a result of going out too often or just being too preoccupied with other non-academic things. It’s also socially derided to care too much about anything because caring is almost seen as a sign of weakness. It’s more acceptable just to adopt an apathetic attitude about it, even if that apathy has to be feigned.

On the other hand, I don’t understand why conversations about academics are so prevalent if people just say misleading things. I still hear so much talk about grade point averges and internships. But the responses are not real — they just degenerate into a contest to see who can sleep the least and still get the best GPA, who can go out every Thursday and Saturday and still hand in A papers. Ten hours of work shrinks into “I finished that program in less than two hours.” Spending all night working on a pset turns into “Oh, last night I just scrolled through Buzzfeed and did absolutely nothing at all.” Then, there’s the infamous PFML post by the person who thought all his classes were just “trivial.” Perhaps I was naïve before, but I really did believe that people at Princeton were putting in zero effort and still pulling off astronomical grades, but certainly not anymore. Most people here care to some extent; otherwise, they wouldn’t be here. They’re just good at hiding it.

In the end though, this article isn’t going to change people’s attitudes about how people talk about their academics. It’s not an attitude exclusive to Princeton. Everywhere, there are high achievers who will conceal how hard they work just to fit in or, conversely, to make themselves seem that much smarter. Personally, I think people should be honest about their work and stop feigning a carefree, don’t-give-a-damn attitude if it’s not real. It just rubs salt in the wound to have people proclaim that they did no work to get the same grades I get. But as a wise friend told me, “that’s just how the real world is.”

Barbara Zhan is a freshman from Plainsboro, N.J. She can be reached at barbaraz@princeton.edu.