Can't we just freeze time?

You all watched "Saved by the Bell" in high school, right? If you didn't, please rewind your life a few years and do that. Thanks. If you did watch the aforementioned glorious show, you, like I, were probably jealous of Zach Morris's ability to take a "time out" from his life and walk around analyzing things while everyone else stood still, frozen in time. Well, I have never been more envious of this ability than I am now. I want to hit that freeze button for a long, long time.

I am a junior. I am 20 years old. I am nowhere near ready to move into the real world, or for that matter, to even think about it. I mean, I guess I could handle it. When I got to college, I didn't have faith in my ability to remember to scrub under my armpits or behind my ears in the shower — and, on most days, I've managed that. But I sure as heck don't want to think about the real world.

Any seniors reading this article probably want to take me to the nearest locker room and give me a George Constanzaesque Atomic Wedgie. "That little pest needs to shut his pie hole," seniors must be thinking. "He's got an entire year and a half left before he has to worry about the real world!"

However, this is not the case. Sure, we juniors have got it better than the seniors, but it is quite impossible to avoid hearing about the real world. One word pretty much sums it up: interviews. Medical school interviews, Wall Street interviews ... even Teach for America only lets a small portion of its applicants into its exclusive doors. It seems like everything other than Cottage is getting selective these days.

Many juniors will go through heavy-duty interviewing this winter for internships, whether in finance, public service or elsewhere. In fact, during my latest NJ Transit trip to New York City, I overheard a freshman girl discussing her summer experience at an investment management firm. "You know, they handle people's money and stuff," explained the freshman to her travel companion. "Like, take care of it. I worked with some of their accounts. Finance is great." Even some of our precocious little pre-frosh are thinking about the real world.

In the real world, I have to keep my clothes clean, pressed, and presentable all the time. I probably have to wear a suit to work. In my current world, I don't know how to tie a tie. In my current world, my most frequent clothing problem occurs when I run out of clean boxers and have to choose between gym shorts and commando shorts.

In the real world, I probably have to stay in an office for about 12 hours a day in a row. In my current world, having back-to-back 80-minute lectures seems like an eternity, often prompting me to daydream about my impending afternoon nap. There is no nap in the office ... unfortunately, most cubicles don't have doors.

I don't mean this article to sound like an Ode to the College Bum or to serve the function of pointing out everything that is terrible about life after college. In the end, when we graduate, there is undoubtedly a very good chance we will find something we enjoy doing, even if we do have to wear a starched suit or medical scrubs to work.

At the risk of entering cheeseball mode, we will take our happy Princeton memories and experiences with us and build upon them when we do enter the big, bad real world.

I think this is an appropriate place to recall the Ferris Beuller line that twenty kids in every graduating high school class choose as their yearbook quote. You know the one I'm thinking of — the one about life moving fast, and looking around and not missing it. This is college. The real world may be around the corner, but fortunately, I can't see around that corner yet. Lucky me! Anyone up for some pre-dinner Beirut? Neel Gehani is an ORFE major from Summit, N.J. He can be reached at ngehani@princeton.edu.