Taking a break

When I first decided to take some time off, I was dreaming of adventure. I’d travel through India and Nepal, or maybe I’d study with a guru in an Ashram. Perhaps I’d volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center in California or rescue turtle eggs from poachers in Costa Rica. Or maybe … I’d go back home.

In the end, I didn’t have the exciting adventure I had imagined I’d be telling my grandchildren about 50 years from now. But what I did have was more important — a break.

At Princeton, pressures bombard us, academic and social. When we stop hitting the books, we hit the Street. We want the best grades, even as grade deflation promises that we probably won’t get them. We want to join the best sports teams or a cappella groups and to belong to the best eating club. Come summer, rather than relaxing, we strive for the best internship. To get here in the first place, we worked tirelessly in high school. And when we leave, we want the best job.

But what if for once, we just stood back? I admit there were times last year when I was frightfully bored. It got to the point where I was all but counting the days until my “real” life would resume and I could return to Princeton. I almost craved stress.

But those moments of boredom were what I needed. I needed the time to think rather than just do — or worse, cruise on autopilot. I needed the time to feel rather than push my emotions to the back burner. Mostly, I needed to have some sense of who I was and what I wanted, and there just wasn’t time on top of classes and everything else to figure that out.

It’s not that I didn’t do anything. I doubt that a year as a couch potato, flipping channels in a half stupor, would be helpful to anyone.

I did several things during my year away from Princeton. I spent the 2008 summer in New York’s East Village participating in a language immersion program at NYU by day and exploring the city by night and on weekends. In the fall, I volunteered for the Obama campaign. I interacted with all kinds of people as I registered voters in September and knocked on doors in October to find out what undecided voters were thinking and what questions they still had about Barack Obama. September through May I waitressed in a popular deli and, I confess, I couldn’t resist taking one college course — after all, the University of Michigan is in my hometown. And this most recent summer, I came back east to Amherst, Mass., to study at the National Yiddish Book Center. I learned about my cultural heritage and gave my scholarly neurons a tuneup.

But though all of these experiences were rewarding, it was equally important that I had time every day to think, about whatever I wanted. I was not constantly going from point A to point B to point C to point A with barely enough time to breathe.

True, I did not have many epiphanies, maybe none. But while those are powerful, they are often fleeting. What I did have was the chance to gradually accumulate knowledge and arrive at a fundamental understanding about myself that I think will always hold true even as I grow and change. No given moment last year seemed all that important at the time, but added together and in retrospect, they were all pivotal.

Taking time off can be scary at first. I spent months debating whether or not it was a good idea and had countless arguments about it with my parents and boyfriend. I waited till the last minute, in August, to finally send in the form. Once I did that, I spent another month doubting my decision. Was I being weak? Was I taking the cowardly way out? Was I wasting a precious year of my life?

But scary as it was, I advise anyone who needs some time to take it. Far from being weak, my time away only strengthened me. I returned to Princeton refreshed, energized and centered. I have the purpose and motivation to live my life actively rather than passively and to get what I want out of Princeton. Not only did I not waste last year, but now I won’t waste the next three.

Miriam Geronimus is a sophomore from Ann Arbor, Mich. She can be reached at mgeronim@Princeton.edu.