Coming around the corner

At the final Senior Pub Night, it became painfully clear that I do not know a large portion of the senior class and this seemed to be the consensus among many people I spoke with that night. Despite sharing four years on the same 500 acres — the same study spaces and dining spaces and workout spaces and social spaces — the senior class, as a whole, remains largely unfamiliar. The subset of the senior class that pushed their way towards the free beer and quickly disappearing French fries was full of — for lack of a better word — strangers.

The realization seemed sad to me. I was standing in a room of people who had struggled through Princeton alongside me, had maybe watched the sun come up from the window of a study room after the same frantic all-nighter, had maybe walked a few steps behind or ahead of me after a night on the Street that wasn’t what we’d hoped, had maybe called home at the same time I called home just to talk to Mom or Dad because the day had been rough and we still hope that our parents might have all the answers. But my chance to meet these people had come and gone. I had fallen into a routine and these people had theirs and it just so happened that our routines did not quite line up. As a senior, everything is filtered through a nostalgic lens. So, it seemed sad to me that I was graduating without knowing more of these people, for they represented all the groups I hadn’t joined, the auditions I missed, the classes I did not take. I felt like I might be graduating with more missed opportunities — be it new friends or experiences or interests — than I had realized.

But this column, my final column, is not about regret. It is too easy to look over these past four years and see all the things we should’ve, would’ve, could’ve done. And that is exactly what I did after the staff of Triumph politely kicked out the few stragglers and another “last” — in this case the “last” Pub Night — was checked off my long list of “lasts” as the year comes to a close. I thought I would write about taking every opportunity, trying to meet as many people as possible so that your Senior Pub Night is filled with friends and acquaintances — not strangers. But you’ve heard that, or some metaphor like it, before. It is no less true, of course. I’ll just throw it in here for good measure — do everything you can! But even if you fill every minute of every day with wonderful Princeton opportunities you’ll still find yourself with regrets. You’ll still have your “what if.” That is okay.

It is the blessing and curse of Princeton students — high-achieving, hyper-aware, analytical — to always see how things could be better. But it takes a distinct effort to step back and acknowledge the things that have been so very good. So, yes, I did not know everyone at the Senior Pub Night, but I knew quite a few. One time, they too were strangers — just another person attending a free Broadway show freshman year, laughing at the same terrible joke in a precept my sophomore year, traveling abroad to the same university my junior year, attending the same Last Lecture my senior year. They represent the opportunities I did take and, when I look upon them, my regrets pale in comparison. So much of being happy, finding comfort in how the past four years were spent, comes from that shift in perspective. My glass is half-full these days.

In fact, I’ve begun to see something exciting in the notion that even after four years in this rather small place you’ll never know everyone. W.B. Yeats wrote, “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t met,” and I wish I had taken that to heart as a lost and somewhat jaded underclassman. There is always the possibility that someone you’ve never seen, not even once, will turn the corner and bump into you and change everything. It could be a friend or a significant other or even a professor who takes you under his wing and opens doors you could not have imagined. Any one of the people at Senior Pub Night could be my friend by Reunions — this year’s or next year’s or the one after that. Princeton is full of people you haven’t met and maybe it’s sad but maybe it’s wonderful and challenging and will always keep this place exciting and new. On the hard days at Princeton, when everything seems wrong and your Mom and Dad don’t have the answers, that is a comforting thought.

Chelsea Jones is an English major fromRidgefield, Conn. She can be reached at chelseaj@princeton.edu.