The real world

Ironically, I'd idealized this concept so much that when I did suddenly find myself having to take time away from Princeton, I felt somewhat at a loss. I felt the need to justify the time off, to seek some kind of fulfillment that transcended what I had been getting from Princeton. Simultaneously, I was scared of unstructured time, scared of what I might discover about my own motivational capabilities when deprived of Princeton's guidelines for life and work. Despite my professed yearning for space to "think," I clung to ideas of deadlines, longed for structured hours and self-imposed tasks to fulfill. I started looking for jobs to fill the seven months that stretched, intoxicatingly empty, ahead of me. Looking back, I think was trying to approximate Princeton outside of Princeton.

This was no easy task. To start, looking for a job in the "real world," without the security of a Princeton-sanctified filter (aka TigerTracks), was significantly more difficult than I'd anticipated. As I scoured slate.com to establish at least a perfunctory grasp of current affairs, fears of tying myself to a seedy or otherwise illegitimate internship plagued my job search. After a week-long tumult of interviews, I found myself accepting the first offer that came my way: a job as "personal assistant" to an independent lawyer, whom I'll call Michael, located in downtown Boston.

Michael, I soon discovered, was legally blind. Instructing me in his slightly abrasive, initially indecipherable Boston accent, with his large, watery blue eyes slightly out of focus and his mouth always set in a thin, crescent smile, he functioned via slow, learned movements. As I began working, it became clear to me that he couldn't care less how well I could write a memo, and he was almost entirely indifferent to my Princeton-born attempts to provide new insights on a particular deposition. During my seven months in the office, I learned not how to debate the minutiae of a legal case, but rather how to communicate in sign language with Michael's menacing Ukrainian receptionist; to fight (and win) endless battles with his temperamental shredding machine; to decode his cell-phone manual instructions like hieroglyphics; to order the right number of pickles when I went to pick up his Friday lunch of fish 'n' chips.

Perhaps meaningless tasks. Yet soon enough, every day of the week began to take on some unique significance. Some Fridays, waiting for Michael's cholesterol-laden lunch of cod and potatoes, I'd chat with Nick, the amiable high school student behind the counter at the restaurant. I soon learned that Nick was an aspiring doctor, working lunch shifts to make ends meet. The week I joined Michael's office, Nick had turned down a college offer from Yale, choosing to enroll at a local, less expensive in-state college to take care of and support his wheelchair-bound father.

He never expressed any regrets.

On Tuesdays, I served as assistant to Michael's secretary, Jan, as she squinted over reams of paperwork. Jan was a reserved yet affable woman in her early 50s. She was also a cancer patient, recovering from a recent bone-marrow transplant. During every lunch break, without fail, she'd sit in the office lobby and play abstractly on the slightly out-of-tune piano. The notes, vague half-melodies, would chime softly, echo and fade among the murmur of lunchtime activity, destined for no one else's ears but hers. "Playing is self-preservation," she told me once. "If only everyone could do what they really love doing."

There were those rare days that I accompanied Michael to court. Turtle-like, we would shuffle from cab to courthouse, his customarily sanguine disposition darkened by concentration. In the courtroom, I became his eyes. Once, Michael acted on behalf of a 20-something woman involved in a custody battle over her son. During their pre-court conversation, she cried most of the time, various emotions competing for reflection across her pale face. Once she'd left, Michael turned to me and said simply: "Tell me how she looked."

As the months went on, Michael began to trust me more. Soon, I was recording evidence directly into a Dictaphone. I created speaking documents. He took my eyes to court with him. Three weeks before I was due to end my internship, I received my final assignment. I read the tormented journal of a 13-year-old rape victim into the mouthpiece. For the purposes of evidence, my voice had to remain as calm and even as an automaton's. I read the words aloud, ran my fingers over the harsh ink etchings, the scarred pages. I had to record the piece seven times before I could do it right.

Now, I've returned to a Princeton, where I don't have to think twice before walking home alone at 3 a.m.; where I worry most about tomorrow morning's paper deadline; where guidance and friendship are (quite literally) on my doorstep. Perspectives, however new and however enlightening, are hard to maintain: Like all of us, I agonize over the day-to-day stresses of Princeton life, immersed in the next hour's activities, fixated on yet another personal goal. Yes, re-enclosure in the opaque Princeton bubble was always inevitable. But there are those moments when a memory from my year away comes floating in. I'll remember how Jan's eyes teared up as she found perfect consonance of understanding in a bar of Brahms. I'll remember having to interpret the anguish of a woman's face as she sobbed over losing her child. In those moments, which are not nearly frequent enough, the bubble becomes wonderfully transparent.