'Interplay of ideas' is the best reason to attend Princeton

With reading period upon us and the inescapable fear of losing my freshman year of college, I am reminded of the very first piece of Princeton propaganda that I ever received on the shores of England. It was a colorful, glossy brochure that among picturesque photographs and smiling students, bore a quote by Adlai Stevenson '22, which read:

"Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came."

This quote has always been stashed among my favorites, and I was left searching for it the other day when a haughty pre-frosh asked me, "So why should I come here? What will I get out of it?" The question caught me off guard, and I mumbled through a list of wonderful "princetonianisms" but failed to find a really magnetic and convincing argument for why I had chosen Princeton. So I once again turned to Adlai Stevenson, presidential candidate and mild-mannered politician of the 1950s for some words of wisdom. After searching in vain for the origins of this poetic quote (only to find that the admissions office had changed their brochure), I eventually found it embedded in Adlai Stevenson's speech to the Princeton graduating class of 1954. (In my searches I discovered that a fellow Princetonian, Donald Rumsfield, had enjoyed the speech so much that he distributed copies of it for years.)

What I have come to realize is that my reasons for originally coming to Princeton have evolved so much in the last fleeting eight months. With my freshman year drawing to a close, my somewhat superficial reasons seem lost amidst the books and the lectures, and I am left searching for a more profound reason for matriculating. As Stevenson put it, "The idea which underlies this university — any university — is greater than any of its physical manifestations; its classrooms, its laboratories, its clubs, its athletic plant, even the particular groups of faculty and students who make up its human element as of any given time," — something that, for me had dominated much of the decision process. But with my freshman year nearly complete I can begin to understand what I truly hope to gain from being a part of the Princeton community.

Never before did I imagine that I would be learning economics from a former economic advisor to the president and vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve. Never could I have dreamed to be learning about the Vietnam War from a professor who was actually stationed in Westmoreland's camp during the conflict. Never would I have thought to tackle such complex questions, problems that I had always left to those in a more erudite positions. While your pre-frosh tour may have implied that you can find the wonders of a Princeton education in the ivy coated dorms and the gothic towers, the Picassos and the professors, the Wilsons and the Einsteins, the pomp and the pageantry, it is only after having spent a year here that I can come close to appreciating what Stevenson meant when he said, "Your greatest satisfactions, your greatest rewards, resulted from the free interplay of ideas. You know that the your most penetrating insights resulted from the exchange and the interchange and clash of ideas."

What it all boils down to is that one phrase, "the free interplay of ideas;" the backbone of the Princeton education. And so in response to my haughty pre-frosh I would say that you come to Princeton to immerse yourself in a campus burgeoning with a unique and diverse student body; each individual having brought with them a different frame of reference, a different belief and a different heritage. While Princeton is a special place because of the history, the tradition and the professors, I look forward to returning next year because of the people I've met, the friends I've made and the conversations we've shared.

Chris Berger is a freshman from London.