You're not where you eat

Seeing freshmen makes me sad. Not because I'm particularly nostalgic for freshman year — in fact, I'm decidedly not — but because I realize there's probably a freshman version of me that I'll never get the chance to meet. I get to meet the aggressive ones, the ones who show up at the Street on Tuesdays and go to tailgates on Saturdays, but somehow I doubt I'll meet the thoughtful but somewhat shy Forbes freshman doing a problem set in his room on Thursday nights, thinking he'd applied to a school without frats and wondering whether his Early Decision was made a little too, well, early.

The way the Princeton scene works, seniors like me only get to meet the ones who went to this high school or have that older sibling or otherwise got the social climber's memo that rushing would make them "cool." And a little piece of me hates myself every time I think it actually did.

But it's only a little piece of me, and not the whole thing, because over the past three years I've come to terms with the politics of the Princeton scene. I used to think it was a rat race, with freshmen and sophomores engaging in a vicious 18-month social game that left more people used and more friendships cast aside than a typical episode of "The Young and the Restless."

Now I see it more as something of a process — a process some people are ready to fully engage in sooner than others, and one that, personally, has been very self-fulfilling. I've been the freshman shut-in, the sophomore hopeful, the junior independent and the senior in a club. In running the gamut of social roles Princeton students play, I've learned that the social scene at Princeton is exactly like the Christmas season — it brings a lot of people incredible joy, and also brings an incredible sense of disillusionment for an alarming number of others. But with that disillusionment comes wisdom and, in many cases, growth.

Before I came to Princeton, I was told that the University inspired love in about 90 percent of undergraduates and intense hatred in the other 10 percent. While I've never really come close to dipping into the hate category, I understand why some do. The structure of the social scene and the politics it engenders are certainly not for everyone, and it can sometimes be hard to find your niche off-campus in a small suburb like Princeton. (However close the Admissions Office tells you New York and Philadelphia are, they're impractical for more than an occasional excursion.) But I don't think it's the eating clubs that are, ultimately, driving this 10 percent to hatred.

I, like too many others, was rejected from an eating club in which most of my best friends were members. Rather than forcing me to redefine my relationship with my friends, as I saw so many people do, getting hosed gave me the opportunity to reexamine my relationship with myself, to figure out what and who made me happy. I learned that it's not the social scene that determines your ultimate happiness at Princeton, but rather how you handle it.

And that's something I would love to tell the freshman me. If only I could meet him.