Missing Out

You may have noticed a trend in my articles. I may be fooling myself into thinking that there is anyone out there besides my mother who has read more than one of my articles. I also may be fooling myself into thinking that my mother has read more than one of my articles. The point is, I have a very strict dogma that I follow when writing — no serious stuff.

Our days are just packed with serious stuff. Independent research, the pressure of upholding the reputation of a long standing academic institution, the dilemma of whether to pursue our happiness or our duties.

Doesn't it look boring even just reading it? I just watched a girl on MTV's Spring Break pour honey all over her bikinied self and flop around on the ground, and she had an audience of hundreds enraptured. If it's this easy to appeal to the masses, why am I busting my butt investigating Mood Affect in Superstitious Information Processing? My thesis becomes infinitely more interesting the second that I use it as an easel for my body painting.

We write about issues in the world and hypothesize a better one, we dissect governmental issues, we propose policies. Compare the feeling you get when you finish yet another precept response paper to when you are getting a backrub or being tickled. It makes the hours spent writing out rough drafts seem kind of fruitless and the minutes spent in a mock-wrestling match more worthwhile and yet more distant. When it's so obviously a no-contest situation, why do we still churn out papers? It's not even a question of planning for the future. After we leave here, do you think we're going to have more necessity for wiffleball and Snood skills or for our ability to juxtapose the rise and decline of the early 20th century stock market with that of Communism? Somehow I feel that I will need to change the oil in my car more times than I will ever need to revisit the knowledge acquired in my comp lit seminar. At least the stargazing skills I'm learning in my astro class can maybe help me score one day.

Our problem is, we don't mix our studies and our intellectual journeys in with enough fun and useful life stuff. Calvin and Hobbes had it right — the mysteries of the human condition revealed themselves best as they were plummeting downhill in a sled. There's something to be said for freeing your mind and then having the rest follow (sing it, En Vogue). I certainly think better when I have a margarita in my hand and the sun on my back.

I'm downright enlightened.

I dread the days when I will do something stupid or not know something easy — like burning the chicken or screwing up my taxes or accidentally bypassing the wrong valve when performing open heart surgery — but not out of embarrassment. Rather, out of annoyance. Annoyance because people will give the same old high school jibe: "And you went to Princeton, huh?" And I, not wanting to unleash my Einsteinian Mensa mind power against them, will smile politely and silently curse the fact that I know the history of tax reform and yet am unable to program the speed dial on my telephone.

Instructions for which, by the way, cost less than $33,000 a year. I'm not suggesting abandoning your academic pursuits altogether, I'm just saying that mixing it up ain't all that bad an idea. Learning to pitch a tent and practicing your volleyball serve may one day be just as handy as macroeconomics, if not more so for the majority of us. Having a little fun is a useful thing, even if it's not on the syllabus. It not only brings you to new levels of intelligence, but in the coming months, it might even improve your tan. Take a lesson from the words of a drunken frat dude on MTV: "Wooooooooooooo!" Jen Adams is a psychology major from Ogdesnburg, N.Y. She can be reached at jladams@princeton.edu.