Enjoys math, physics and anal beads

Lying back gets pretty boring after a while, and evidently one of my shepherd friends back home got especially bored one day and decided to create an account on adultfriendfinder.com on my behalf. Hence does the profile for username “bigkangdong” read as follows: “I am a local Princeton student looking for local loving. I enjoy maths, physics and anal beads … If you think you can handle this please contact me or for further info Google me ‘Eric Kang.’ ” Next to that are two photos, one of me and one of some Asian man’s penis, and some more “personal details” which are mostly incorrect: I’m not “bi-curious”, I’m not a “cigar/pipe smoker, and I don’t use “recreational drugs.” For that matter, I don’t and will never know if I enjoy anal beads, either.

I received two e-mails titled “Your Perfect Match is Here!” before I marked cupid@adultfriendfinder.com for the junk mail folder. How there can exist more than one “perfect match” is a little confusing to me: It seems there can be at most one, if not none. I suppose on Feb. 21, “KissableChocolat” — a “38 year old woman from Hershey Place, New Jersey” — was ideal for me, but on Feb. 28, “NipplesNeed” — a “51 year old woman from Princeton, New Jersey” — was my new perfect match. How fickle my love is!

Thanks to my friend’s creativity, I effortlessly found two possibly sentient romantic partners. During that time at Princeton, despite my efforts, I didn’t meet anyone new, let alone potential romantic interests.

All jokes aside, my friends and I often talk about how difficult it is to meet new people on campus. The worst part is that we know there are groups of people around campus having exactly the same conversation. In a March 3 column, Camille Framroze ’12 highlighted the trend of initially eager freshmen becoming reclusive members of particular social circles. Regrettably, my friends and I have found that it only gets worse as students mature.

Is Princeton unique in this? Certainly not, but it shouldn’t have to be this way.

We Princetonians tend to self-aggrandize: We work so hard, are under so much pressure and stress and have such high internal and external expectations to meet. These may be somewhat true, but we need to get over ourselves a little. At every decent university in the world are a good number of students who are just as smart and work just as hard as we do and who still make an effort to meet new people. My friends at medical school in New Zealand work at the hospital from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day and then finish their coursework upon returning home at midnight. Nevertheless, they endeavor to maintain a normal social life and go to parties to genuinely get to know new people (more than as nameless hookup partners). What Princeton has instead, in the form of the Street, is a McDonald’s of meeting new people: quick, easy, uncomplicated, unsatisfying, unfulfilling and un-lasting.

Admittedly, Princeton has unique social challenges. But I can’t see how the situation would get any better in later stages of our lives. We are not going to have substantially more free time at law, medical or business school. It’s only going to be harder to meet people from other departments at graduate school. And we probably walk past, sit across from or come into contact with more people at Princeton in a day than we will at our jobs in a fortnight.

None of this is enough to make me run off to Adult Friend Finder just yet. I’m willing to try harder, but if my efforts continue to be unsuccessful — with nights on the Street and meals at eating clubs resulting in no new acquaintances — I may be left with no choice but to retreat into my online personality.