Be cool — stay in school! - The Princetonian

Like Rodney Dangerfield, even at the height of his mid-eighties "Back to School" fame, Princeton grad students don't get no respect. This is something we've grown accustomed to over the years, as the buff, blond undegrads with names like "Brianna" and "Cullen" look askance at the slouched, disheveled figures in their midst — haunted, older folk who pass through this campus as the subaltern "other" by which the privileged undergraduate "we" defines its "ontological boundaries" and who it is willing to "sleep with."

In Wednesday's 'Prince,' however, the routine grad-bashing which marks the nation's number-one university reached a new extreme, as columnist Cullen Newton used the "blank stares of the students over across the golf course" as evidence that no Princeton undergrad should even consider applying to grad schools. Heaven forefend that y'all would ever turn into hollow shells of humanity like us, the specter-preceptors who mark your problem sets and haunt your sleepless nights.

In fact, however, grad school is almost certainly the best choice for the young Princetonian who would otherwise be coldly thrust into the real world, by which I do not mean being cast on an MTV reality show. Basically, grad school in the liberal arts just means that you get to keep doing pretty much what you're already doing — taking classes, writing papers and so on — only rather than paying to do it, you now get paid to do it. Pretty sweet, no?

Admittedly, your compatriots become rather geekier than they used to be, but this is actually something of a blessing in disguise. When I arrived at grad school, I experienced a sudden realization: For the first time in my life, I was one of the cool kids. No, I hadn't changed from freak to fabulous, like that moment in the music video where the librarian takes off her glasses and shakes out her hair, revealing the babe that she always had hidden deep inside. To the contrary, everyone around me had just gotten much, much nerdier. We're talking actual pocket protectors here, people. But that just made me feel all the cooler in comparison.

Besides, what's the alternative to grad school? Consulting? Let me tell you a little secret about consulting. All those "innovative solutions for a better world" that those firms advertise? Y'know what those solutions, without exception, actually involve? Firing people.

Think about it: Why would some corporate big shots decide to bring in a bunch of fresh-faced, straight-outa-college Ivy Leaguers to tell them how to run their company? Do they think these wet-behind-the-ears post-adolescent puppies know something about running their companies that the big shots themselves somehow missed all these years? Hells no. They just don't want to be the ones who have to look some middle-aged middle-manager in the eye and tell him that he won't be able to afford his heart medication any more because he's being laid off. They want the fresh-faced Ivy Leaguers to do that for them. And they're willing to pay said Ivy Leaguers darn good money to do it. But when that middle-manager you fired keels over dead from a heart attack, will a six figure salary be enough to assuage your guilty conscience?

Well, yes, it probably will. You'll be off in some trendy bar drinking single malt scotch and smoking illegal Cohibas, and probably won't even hear about Project Manager Dingleworth's sad fate. But hey, an eternity of hellfire awaits your damned soul in the end, so what goes around comes around.

Me, I'll still be here in Jersey — working on my dissertation and getting by on my just-barely-two-figure stipend, but with peace in my soul and a smile on my face, taking comfort in the knowledge that here, at long last, I am totally cool.