Imprudent Princetonian priorities

What does an average, healthy human adult need to survive?

Food, water, shelter and seven to nine hours of sleep.

What does an average Princetonian need to survive?

One square meal a day, shelter, A’s, four to five hours of sleep, significant involvement in three different student groups and water. And the strange part is, we’re actually quite puffed up about our ridiculously impractical modifications to a studied, tested and proven recipe for basic human health.

Personal health and hygiene are unfortunately not priorities on campus. We come to college excited at the prospect of surviving on our own, learning how to be independent and managing our own lives without parental intrusion. We have to unravel the well-hidden secrets of the laundry machines and make sure we have enough decent-smelling clothes to wear. We have to decide what time we’ll eat, what we’ll eat, with whom we’ll eat and where we’ll eat. We have to establish a sleeping cycle that suits us. But rather than confront these problems and learn how to be functional, sane adults without our parents ironing clothes and shoving disgusting-but-nutritious snacks down our throats, most of us simply ignore them. Laundry piles up and gradually begins to seep across the room like some kind of wild creature. Meals are skipped for the sake of a pre-lab or a problem set with alarming regularity. And Stacey Wenjun Zhang’s April 3 ‘Prince’ article, “Running on empty,” demonstrated the alarming extent to which Princeton students are willing to sacrifice rest to turn in an assignment or attend a meeting.

Worse, these ridiculous conditions become something to be proud of. The truth is that lack of sleep and food on this campus offers some form of boasting material. It is absurdly commonplace to see one Princeton student go up to another and proudly proclaim, “I got only five hours of sleep last night! I had a physics problem set due,” only to be thwarted by the competitor’s snobby retort, “You’re so lucky, I only got four! I had a paper due this morning.” You then witness the original challenger marshalling his arguments for another shot, calling upon averages and medians for back-up: “Well, five is the most I’ve had all week. I had two papers and a lab report due, plus I’ve got a performance in a Shakespeare play next week, and I’ve had rehearsals all day.” Wounded, but not defeated, the second student plays his trump card: the total. “Over the past four days, I’ve only had a total of 15 hours.” With this formidable weapon, he decisively wins the battle, and the challenger walks off determined to drown himself in caffeine and win the next time around.

This kind of situation doesn’t seem to suggest a bright future. It won’t matter later in life how many tasks we can juggle if we can’t remain functional, relatively sane, caffeine-free adults while doing so. College life should not teach us how to prioritize just in terms of juggling different activities and responsibilities. It should teach us how to take on only as much as we can manage, not to compromise on our health and sanity just for the sake of one A. There may be some long-term benefits from sacrificing sleep every single night or three square meals every single day for the sake of doing better academically. But we should not reach the point where health is so low on our priority list that it is completely neglected — that would be counterproductive. You likely won’t be able to make a coherent contribution to your precept with just three hours of sleep. You almost certainly won’t be able to concentrate in lecture if the indignant sounds of an unloved stomach drown out your professor’s voice.

If all that many of us are learning from our college experience is how to ignore and subvert basal human needs instead of how to satisfy both those needs and our academic requirements, then our experience is wasted. The good thing is that these attitudes do seem to improve as we advance further through college and morph from freshmen gleeful about our newfound freedom to more responsible and sensible seniors. Perhaps this involves the realization that our ability to be independent and manage our own lives is not measured purely in terms of a GPA. Responsibility is also measured in terms of the frequency of stomach rumbling, the number of dark circles under our eyes and the amount of clean underwear left in our drawers.