Throw yourself in

As Princeton prepares to welcome the Class of 2021, the latest in a perennial series of the increasingly diverse, well-qualified cohorts, current students — even us post-thesis seniors long removed from the days of admitted-student lanyards and peer academic advising — will be sought out to provide lessons learned and parting words of wisdom to those about to replace us on this campus. This is a question I’ve recently been facing a lot at home as well, as my sister prepares to enter her freshman year at Boston College. And while I hope to save my final thoughts for my soon-to-be final column, in the few weeks left before college decision day, there’s one message I hope the incoming class, at Princeton and elsewhere, will take to heart: Throw yourself in, with reckless abandon.

When you arrive in September, likely reeking from OA, you’ll almost immediately be inundated by opportunities to join new clubs and build on the interests and accomplishments that got you here. You’ll walk in a nervous group through crowded aisles in Dillon Gymnasium, dodging club officers with candy enticing you to join their listservs. In the next few weeks, you, like the rest of us, will discover that in many contexts, “no prior experience needed” is just a meaningless string of syllables put in order. Because of this sorting, many of you may, as I did freshman year, end up pursuing many of the same activities that you excelled in during high school, which may have helped get you a spot at Princeton.

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with deepening one’s interest and ability in previous passions. The chance to do so here alongside some of the most talented people in their fields has been one of the great blessings of these four years. So by all means, dive deeper into the things that truly give you joy, that challenge and stimulate you, and that allow you to work with people you admire.

But consciously carve out space, especially in freshman fall and again during freshman spring club sign-ups, to cast a wide net in the search for new passions and hobbies, most meaningfully those that will never end up on your résumé and that resemble nothing else in your portfolio of interests. Join a club, or start your own, that serves to help you relieve stress or gain the deeper fulfillment that comes from serving others. Even if it ends up being for just an hour a week, you’ll thank yourself for doing it during the many times here when you’ll feel the mounting stress is inescapable. It isn’t, but only if you make it not so.

As Max Grear wrote last week, part of the Princeton experience, for better or worse, is that your academic, social, and even professional life while here will be oriented around the institution itself. You will almost certainly live on campus, engage almost exclusively with campus-based organizations, and interact almost exclusively with other Princeton affiliates. In part, this reality has been a joy — I can fully attest to the bond of a deeply common experience shared between close friends exists more strongly here than at peer schools where the boundaries between campus and city are more fluidly integrated. However, it was at times suffocating — junior year here was the hardest of my life in overwhelming part because there was no physical place or emotional peer group to escape to when a sense of comparative failure came to dominate my experience.

Rededicating myself to pursuits having nothing to do with prestige or accomplishment — Princeton will never write a news story about me or fête me at a reception — has been a tremendously important way of overcoming that suffocation this year, and I only wish I had done so sooner. So, while the information overload of a campus activities list numbering over 300 groups can seem to beg you to just default to what you already know, make every effort you can, as early as you can, to find new meaning and excitement in passions you have not yet discovered. Beyond the satisfaction it will bring you early on, it can make all the difference in a pinch down the line.

Ryan Dukeman is a Wilson School major from Westwood, Mass. He can be reached at rdukeman@princeton.edu.