This past month, Princeton became the first town in New Jersey to earn a place in the World Health Organization’s global network of “age-friendly” communities. The criteria for this distinction includes availability of affordable housing, transportation and access to social interaction. All in all, it seems that Princeton makes a good home for the elderly.
This news got me thinking about age, something that is less noticeable as I spend most of my time surrounded by people my age. Understandably, Princeton’s “age-friendly” status matters little to us, a group of young students who, for the most part, have little need for housing in town or access to social functions for the elderly. But this facet of off-campus Princeton life could serve as a reminder that age is not always defined by the categories of freshman, sophomore, junior or senior.
Although nearly all of us fall into the same age group, we vary in age in ways that are not always reflected by the year that we will graduate. Some students are young for their class —they may have started schooling early or skipped a grade or, in the case of a few, began at the University as sophomores (I found out recently that I am the same age as my peer academic adviser, a senior who began as a sophomore). There is a sizable group of students who have taken gap years, not only before beginning here but also at other points in the Princeton experience. I have heard many gap year stories, from working at home as an EMT or ESL teacher to going abroad to volunteer at an NGO fighting human trafficking in India. I met one student who served in the Korean military for two years between sophomore and junior years.
But for the most part, the different ages of these students show only in subtle ways. This is mainly because the age difference is usually small. A year away from school can be pivotal, but that doesn’t change everything. 18- to 21-year-olds socialize together, and one year more or less doesn’t fundamentally alter the way one interacts with peers.
Still, the fact that one’s age is defined by graduation year indicates to me that we define maturity in this same way. Over the four years here, students learn an incredible number of things about intellectual pursuits as well as personal relationships. But students also learn how to get on “the list” or how to act in pointless Bicker scenarios, graduate from the initiated to the initiators in their dance groups or sports teams and memorize frat songs. These things matter, obviously, to the culture. They can be fun for some people while sometimes elitist to others. But the fact that, all joking aside, these kinds of things are actually important to some is evidence of the divide between “Princeton years” and “life years.”
I don’t mean to make a high-minded argument about the tomfoolery of “kids these days.” I honestly don’t care too strongly about harmless shenanigans. We may be adults, but we’re not “grown-ups.” However, the point when things like initiations and eating club memberships, which are so specific to life inside the Bubble, become signals of experience and maturity demonstrates the problem with the “Princeton years vs. life years” divide. The world, as we all know but may sometimes forget, does not operate according to the mindset of people our age.
As with plenty of other issues here, this divide is a matter of perspective. But it’s not about gap year students having perspective and everybody else lacking it; it is important instead to remind ourselves that we have different kinds of experiences, spent inside or outside of school. A year more or less of age does make a difference, and maturity is something independent of those things unique to campus life that will cease in a few years to have any relevance to one’s life.
This is probably an observation about college life in general, not just about Princeton, and I don’t think that we worry too much about the distinctions between different years. We all have friends from different classes, and we mix together easily. However, I still think that perceptions of age and maturity are affected too much by arbitrary bits of campus culture. This is why anyone who has had life experience in the past few years outside of the Bubble or high school has a right to be irritated that this outside experience is so often less relevant to social life here than familiarity with the idiosyncratic norms of campus culture.
When every so often I venture off campus, I enjoy confirming my suspicions that young adults like myself do not make up the large majority of the world’s population. I like to know now that this town is welcoming not only to the young but also to older people as well. Princeton comprises only a small part of one's life, and even among students here, there is a variety of age, experience and maturity that is only partially reflected by one’s status as a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior. Let’s keep this in mind when we think about how we can grow as students, musicians, athletes, artists, scientists and individuals.
Max Grear is a freshman from Wakefield, R.I. He can be reached at mgrear@princeton.edu.
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