Achieving at Princeton

A few Sundays ago, my friend called with startling news. "Tessa!" she shrieked. "We're on the cover of The New York Times!" Now, the article wasn't exactly about us (though my friend's former high school was featured); but it was about a cosmic us — or, rather, a demographic us: the Amazing Girls, as they were called, those up-and-coming youngsters who in this post-feminist age are expected to be athletes, intellectuals, humanitarians and ... hot.

When I made it to the magazine, I was doubly surprised. "Grades Aren't Everything," cried the graffitied cover; "A Student Is Not a Container." I couldn't believe it: the Times, addressing the operationalization of education! When I looked more closely, however, I faced two more surprises: First, the piece was about Chinese education; second, why had I so easily assumed it was about Americans?

For the past few years, Princeton has sat comfortably at the top of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. To be honest, I think we deserve it. I do not know students at any other school who work as hard as we do, read and write as much as we do or have as much independent work as we do. But as the monsoon season of independent work rains down on us upperclassmen, inundating our lives with the pages that surely make us the "best," I wonder about what is expected of us as students of the nation's finest university.

I didn't have a junior paper in the fall, and I've had trouble this semester getting myself into the groove. My jump-start needed a friend who's now on her second to explain what the "groove" entails: I must work on my JP with the understanding that I simply will not be prepared for all my classes this week. It just isn't possible; there aren't enough hours. And far be it from me to actually complain. This perplexing phenomenon occurs all the time for the well-rounded student (which I am not) who participates in one of the highly demanding extracurricular activities on campus — sports teams, publications, performance groups and so forth. Games need to be won, songs to be sung. Reading assignments, however, eventually dissipate.

Here at Princeton, we live in the lap of college luxury. I don't have to cook, clean or pay bills. I eat in a mansion that throws parties I don't have to plan. Hell, I don't even have a job. My every whim is catered to and I don't mind one bit. It seems that performance — in whatever we choose to do — becomes all that is asked of us. I don't have time to babysit my professor's kids (not that it's a problem, because he's never asked), and I don't remember what I learned last week. But in the last six days I skimmed 400 pages, went to a film screening, wrote two papers and made it through my seminars without looking like a moron. Oh, and I choreographed a dance and won a lacrosse game. Did I mention I'm the class president?

As we ponder the staggering number of new alums who will join the financial sector, I can't help thinking about the way in which achievement is defined while we're still here. After the work we've all done, the quality of our analytic and communications skills is surely unparalleled; I have no doubts as to why so many corporations recruit here as heavily as they do. The issue, however, is that we take the jobs often — (though not always) without second thought — as to where our passions lie and what it is we're meant to be doing with our lives. My Princeton education is worth more to me than a $50,000 signing bonus, but many of my peers seem to disagree. It appears that we can think without having to think for ourselves — but on the road to true success, efficient minds are no match for independent ones. Tessa Brown is a religion major from Chicago, Ill. She may be reached at trbrown@princeton.edu.