Every 11 days: Bursting the bubble, experiencing 'the real world'

Since I've been at Princeton, I've instituted something in my life that I like to call the "11-Day Rule." No, it isn't some crazy diet schedule or a workout routine designed to get me the J.Crew physique I've always been craving. It's much simpler than that: Every eleventh day of my life here at Princeton must be spent somewhere, well, other than Princeton. No matter what I have scheduled for that day, I have to leave, skedaddle, get gone, pack up my bags, head for the hills and get the heck outta' here.

I like to think of it as "bubble bursting." Just me and the Dinky taking the sharp end of a safety pin to the pristine sheath that has somehow managed to engulf this campus and surrounding area. It isn't something you can see, but don't be fooled — the bubble exists.

Where is it? What is it? It's hard to quantify, but take a look around and you'll see it. It's the way I have every meal waiting for me whenever I feel the urge to eat, and the way I have Nobel Prize winners eating at the table next to me. It's the rows of BMW's that always seem to be parked between Walker and Gauss. It's the neatly cut hair and the L.L. Bean backpacks that trod along next to me. It's the way that when I ask someone, "What are you doing tonight?" their choices are inevitably limited to 11 mansions brimming with rudimentary and monotonous "fun." It's the way my eyes get glazed over from staring at endless hours of Instant Messenger conversations — my only connection to beloved friends trapped in similar bubbles around the country.

It's how I haven't seen a snitch of television broadcasting in almost two months. It's how a phone call home to mom in Cali-fornia will leave me with the knowledge that there is a sniper in Washington, D.C. It's the way I haven't thought about anything other than Samuel Morse and Sir Philip Sidney for the past week and it's how I have not slept in 23 hours. It's the fact that I was unaware until yesterday that the country is in the midst of the World Series. I mean, weren't baseball players on strike or something?

It's the natural division between us — Princeton students tucked nicely away in a heap of billion-dollar educational facilities — and them — everyone else that seems to be living in "the real world." It's a place that we've heard of here, but, unfortunately, only get to see on CNN as we pass the big screen television in Frist.

So every 11 days, just as the distance between us and them seems to be nearing insurmountable, I ride a silver bullet on the Northeast Corridor Line right through Princeton's shiny bubble and into the real world. There are homeless people, sidewalk dancers and movie theaters that play more than two movies. There are people that work instead of study, buildings that house stories I haven't had the time to dream of and trains that are actually convenient to take. More than anything, there is a sense of life and people living it, a sense that things are moving and changing — and alive.

Then, slowly and reluctantly, I make my way back to this tiny bubble of scholastic wealth. And, as the Dinky sounds its horns over Faculty Road, and the bubble wraps its slimy hands around my life once more, I smile at the fact that there are only 11 more days before I get to make a run for it again. Alfred Brown '05 is from Manhattan Beach, Calif. He can be reached at aebtwo@princeton.edu.