Becoming a freshman again

Perhaps more accurately, I feel like a freshman all over again. I don’t know everyone on the team yet, there’s all this new lingo (“strikes!” “stock opps!” “APDA tight!”), and I fully look up to the older debaters. Moreover, most of the other novices I’m learning and debating with are freshmen. Freshman boys, to be more precise, and they’re great — eager, smart and better at debating than I am. Just as freshmen should be, they are not afraid to dive in, make mistakes, or make new friends. Spending time with them has made me think about my first year here, back when everything was new.

Looking back, I’ve realized how routine and familiar my Princeton experience has become. I’ve gotten good at taking classes in my academic comfort zones. I eat at the same time every day with the same people in the same eating club. I wake up at the same time every day. I have the same few political debates and discussions over and over again. The group of people I interact with on a daily basis has shrunk significantly since my first year. Sure, there is comfort in routine, and I’m happy with my life here at Princeton, but in recent years I haven’t provided myself with many new opportunities for personal growth.

Conversely, freshman year provided countless opportunities for such growth and for fuller integration into the campus experience. Freshman year, you met new people every day, you sat down at any old table in the dining hall, and you struck up conversations right and left. You weren’t really sure where you fit in yet. I might be romanticizing the past, but I do remember feeling sort of boundless. This feeling, this desire to dive in and try anything, is why we’re on so many listservs — we felt free to sign up for anything at the activities fair. (As if we could juggle 19 extracurriculars.)

So what — freshman year we were slightly younger, more wide-eyed, and more open to new experiences. Then, over the course of our four years here, we settle into our friend groups, our academic specialties, and our extracurriculars. This is the way it works. But what I’m saying here is that we lose something valuable when we get settled into our routines. We get stuck in our ways and even stop looking for new adventures. It reminds me of the Triangle song about how Princeton is an old folks’ home. It may be that we structure our lives so that “nothing ever happens in Princeton” — we walk the path of least resistance. In my “seniority,” I’ve come to embody this ethos — and I’m even guilty of eating at 5:30 p.m. most nights.

Joining the debate team shook me out of it a little bit, or at least made me recognize my condition. It has taken me partially out of my comfort zone and has allowed me to interact with a group of people I might otherwise never have met. Debating makes me feel like a nervous freshman again, and this is a very good thing.

So to my upperclassman peers, or to anyone who feels they may be guilty of finding too much comfort in routine, I highly recommend trusting yourself to try something new. There are plenty of opportunities on campus to find an activity that spices up your routine — a play, a volunteer group, an open mic night. If you feel like you’ve come a long way since freshman year, you may be right. But you may also be guilty of settling into the grooves you’ve carved out for yourself — I am. As an antidote, try being a freshman again in some aspect of your life. Not only does it build a little character, it’s fun.

Molly Alarcon is a Wilson School major from Mill Valley, Calif. She can be reached at malarcon@princeton.edu.