Leaving home for good, daunted by real independence

The well-known American novelist Thomas Wolfe has often been quoted as writing, "You can't go home again." As I look to my last days on Princeton's campus, I begin to understand the truth of those words.

Over dinner the other night, in fact, I was talking to a friend of mine who shared Wolfe's sentiments. He was saying that all he wanted to do was to go home. And the fact that his parents had moved from New Jersey to Florida wasn't the only roadblock to that trip. We commiserated over the fact that even when we go to our houses, even to the places we grew up, there was no way to recapture the days of our childhood. Who knew, he asked, that being an adult would be so "annoying?"

He's right. As I look ahead to leaving Princeton, I realize how much college — especially here — is simply a development, if not an extension, of our childhoods. We're so eminently pampered here — or at least I feel like it. Someone cooks my meals, takes out my trash, cleans my bathroom. Someone pays my bills, sets my social calendar and makes sure I turn all my work in on time. My friends are, at most, a five minute walk away, so I never have to be alone. One alum told me, in fact, that in the fifty years since he had graduated Princeton he had yet to achieve a standard-of-living as high as the level he enjoyed as a Princeton undergraduate. So, I have to admit that, although I might be excited to be done here, I'm a bit scared to walk out of those gates.

In my creative writing class this past semester, Professor Edmund White observed how all of the characters in the stories that my class was writing lacked any indication of socioeconomic status. He hypothesized that it was because as children and young adults we don't have to think about money all that often. He remarked that, in reality, money is a chief concern of day-today life. And ever since, I've been much more appreciative of the seemingly unlimited buying power of my prox.

If I can't go back to being a little kid, then I've decided that I want to be a dog. They're cute and furry and their only responsibilities are sitting around wondering when their next meal is. I thought it'd be the perfect life, until someone reminded me that dogs have to wait for someone to let them pee.

I guess, then, it's inescapable (not that canine transfiguration was really a viable option): I have to grow up. But my friend's observation about the dog's dependence on its master is wise. As children — or as dogs — we are reliant on other people. As children, we lack a feeling of self-sufficiency. Don't you remember how you hated having to ask permission to do all those things you wanted to do? I guess the price of self-reliance is the fear that we might not be able to make it. Perhaps it's the imagined burden of the day-today that has always been taken care of for us makes independence so daunting.

It is important to remember two things. I have to remind myself of them frequently. Number one: Millions of people take care of themselves every year. And most of them do it without a Princeton degree. Number two: We are not alone; we have friends, family and a support system that will help us.

Yes, these are the musings of a senior who is writing his last column and who is spending his last Reading Period freaking out that it is his last Reading Period. But readers of my columns in the 'Prince' have been privy to most of the other trials of my undergraduate life, so I figured why not this one too? Thanks for reading.