The sun sets Princeton orange

Four years ago, I didn't know you could write a 20-page paper in two days or two weeks and get the same grade. I didn't know that the key to Prospect Avenue didn't come on the same chain as the one to Phi Beta Kappa or that I would be leaving Princeton markedly overeducated and under-informed, over-partied and under-skilled, overwhelmed and underprepared. As Bob Seger says, I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then. But that's not the measure of the experience.

Mine were four years defined by rowing at 4:30 p.m. and Wa runs at 4:30 a.m. I certainly partied too much and studied too little, always seemed to be reading but never felt well read and too often watched "Top Gun" in my dorm instead of being top-gun in the classroom. I own flight suits and '80s jumpsuits for theme nights but had to borrow a suit for my first interview. I can now recite "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," but most of the RAM in my head contains random "Simpsons" quotes. I somehow don't know the protagonist of "Wuthering Heights," but I can tell you how tall each Smurf in the Smurf village is (three apples high, in case you were wondering).

In my four years, I have taken classes with two Pulitzer Prize winners and a Nobel Laureate. I have rowed alongside world champions and met presidential candidates. I have seen the world premiere of a forgotten opera and the sunny coasts of Spain, Bermuda and California; everything you'd expect from a Princeton experience. I've also been in the Woody Woo Fountain, the golf-course pond and that weird modern sculpture between Peyton and Fine halls. I've seen more classmates than I can count travel to foreign countries to do community service. I don't know how many times I've seen someone offer a chair and invite a 12th person to sit at an eight-person table so he or she wouldn't have to eat alone.

I have missed only two lectures in my entire Princeton career, one because of surgery to set a broken nose endured during a particularly intense game of IM flag football. But I have never been to a Friday class (luckily, I have never had a class scheduled on that day, so it's ok). I have never been in a language class, a math class or inside any building in the E-Quad. The only two hours I spent in McDonnell were for an economics exam (I got a C and vowed never to return). I have always wanted to go to the top of Fine Hall Tower and into the rock-magnetism lab behind Eno Hall, which hasn't been used since the mid-'80s and the only key to which belongs to Ken Deffeyes, a geology professor emeritus whom you should get to know, regardless of whether you get access to the building.

I have seen the sun rise and set Princeton-orange over Lake Carnegie and sung Handel's Messiah in one of the most beautiful college chapels in the world. I have played countless games of beirut but also countless games of pickup soccer and Trivial Pursuit. I have done crossword puzzles for hours (and then written Blackboard posts in minutes).

These skills aren't marketable. I doubt anyone will offer me a job only if I can sink the last cup (but God don't I wish). I also don't think I'll ever have to discuss in depth the allegory of "The Faerie Queen" except on English department comprehensives. I can tell you what trochaic hexameter looks like, but honestly, who cares? I do wish Princeton had offered a class in "Life Skills," or maybe "How to not be Socially Awkward 101," but I don't think any professor here is quite qualified to teach it.

I have never doubted that Princeton will open many doors for me or that, had I worked harder, it would have opened all of them. Everyone at this school could probably have a 4.0 average and an investment-banking job when they graduate, but I think most of what people take away from this place isn't in a book. It's impossible to leave Princeton without vastly more knowledge than you came with. It is possible to leave unfulfilled.

Regrettable as my academic performance here might have been, I don't regret one minute I spent at a play, an arch-sing or every sporting event I could find time for. I highly recommend pushing your boundaries: walking down to Poe Field at 4:30 p.m., cleats-in-hand, and joining any pickup game you can or sitting on the couch of your eating club and talking to anyone who walks in. The best lectures I remember were the ones on subjects I'd never heard of given by visiting professors whose names I couldn't pronounce.

Thomas Edison once said, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work." But Princeton is full of opportunities that require no work at all, only interest. Princeton is not an answer to your life; it's the first place where you get to question how you're going to live. For me, Princeton will always be Lake Carnegie on a crisp fall day and my best friends in the Ivy TV room trying to guess the answer to a Final Jeopardy clue we haven't seen yet — just another unknown whose answer will never be as important as how we embrace the question. Blaise Latella is a senior English major from Queens, N.Y. He can be reached at blatella@princeton.edu.