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E-PrinceWriting columns for The Daily Princetonian can be tricky. Sometimes I find myself impassioned by outrage and the requisite 750 words flow freely from my fingers. Other times, coming up with something to write about is more of a chore ...(back to the article)
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Well said Martha! I think too many people see the world through the glass-is-half-empty lens instead of seeing that it is also half full. As some of you sit and complain about your life at Princeton it might help to think about all the thousands of applicants who got rejection letters the year you received your acceptance. Would you like to trade places with them?
While I understand your call to optimism, I like many other students find it discouraging that most of what I am grateful for at Princeton has been in spite of, not because of, the university and its administration. Good roommates and interesting neighbors make up for my small, un-renovated room in upperclass housing (which subsidizes your whitman room, by the way). I love my eating club, and everyone in it. Despite a cramped 12-wk academic schedule, I know I'll still always find time for my club sports team, which gets virtually no funding and plays on poorly maintained fields that are too far away. And I learn more from my discussions with fellow classmates than I do in any class, where half the time I get papers and tests back with nary a comment other than the grade.
Don't dismiss legitimate complaints as mere whining. If you really care about the character and future of Princeton, tossing money at it is about the last thing that's needed.
The mentality that the Princeton experience must be treasured because of the thousands of students who were not admitted is one that is not just naive, but completely wrong. No, of course there is no reason to wish to trade places with these students. But then again, their Princeton is not the real one, it does not have the flaws that students find in their years here, it is not filled with the complaints that have powered so many rants, it is instead their dream school, a fictional perfection. In reality, the U.S. News has found to be the best school in the country, and to many of these applicants, its 1 has made this an undeniable fact (a rather redundant term).
So no, we are not them, and we certainly would not want to be them, the poor fools who were--despite what the generous rejection letters will say--simply not good enough but this does not help us. They would tell us to count our lucky stars, but these stars are not lucky, to claim them so would be to insult the work we put into high school while our friends were out drinking and procrastinating, wasting away the way many men do.
But alas, this was not supposed to be an attack on the men who surround us, or a call for action against blind optimism, it is merely a message to put the simplest out on the table. If we continue to attend this school, it is because, in some way, we like it. Whether it is our classes or the pride with which we will mingle and network flaunting our class rings, we are in some way motivated to stay here, and we do not leave, we do not quit, we complain.
Do we have a right to complain? Why, yes, of course, as long as its motivation is change and progress, but to complain about the totality, as if this were a prison cell, is nothing but a waste. It is these people who should switch places with the countless rejected, eager students.