Princeton perfection

There is a certain amount of effort required from an administration to make a school run like clockwork. It must be a logistic miracle to sort students into classes, assign rooms, maintain all the facilities and do the thousands of other tasks necessary for making sure Princeton runs perfectly. But there is a certain amount of effort required on top of that to make it look like you didn’t do the work in the first place, to make it seem like Princeton is just naturally perfect. The ceremonial and historic outward appearance of Nassau Hall belies the serious business conducted there, and we are left thinking this place is fundamentally and inevitably infallible. Princeton tries very hard to be perfect, and part of the psychology of perfectionism is disallowing for the possibility that anything but perfect is an option.

To me, this is typified by a fascinating architectural feature in my dining hall of choice, Rockefeller-Mathey. A large metal sheet extends from the ceiling in front of the dish-return area, allowing for a one-foot gap at waist level to hand dirty dishes to the employee on the other side. Why is the kitchen hidden from us? It seems the University wants us to think of it as a magic “dishes in, food out” box. To expose the kitchen would be to expose the energy Princeton puts in to making our lives unbelievably cozy.

Yet for all its effort, conscious or not, to hide this from the students, we are affected by it. We came to a place where perfection is the norm. In order to be worthy of this near-utopia, we must do the same. We are perfectionists, chasing an ideal that many agree is unproductive for our psyche. I don’t mean perfectionist in the sense of a detailed-oriented person, but rather as psychologist Adam Phillips explains it: “No one knows more than the perfectionist about his own abjection, his own unrelenting incapacity to be as good as he should be.” Perfectionists are afraid to make mistakes and, therefore, are afraid to think about things in different ways. We have a conceptual framework that enables us to achieve whatever we define as perfect, we fill this structure with goals whose accomplishment we believe will lead to perfection — and then we’re afraid of breaking down this confining system of thought.

This obsession with being perfect is followed by attempts to make it seem like the perfection took no effort at all — like the hidden 3 a.m. snow plowing. We take on endless responsibilities, refuse not be the best in any of them, and then try to make it look like all of it was easy. But Princeton cannot impart a deep and sound education to a person who dogmatically refuses to accept failure. The perfectionist sees education as something that can be finished. It becomes a means to an end, and, meanwhile, public and civic discourse remain stagnant.

But are we not all perfectionists by nature? There are some who argue that this is not a top-down issue, that we did not learn perfectionism from Old Nassau. We were accepted to this school because we always endeavored to be perfect and we are fated to be this way in college. But applicants of Princeton are not self-selecting. With 26,166 applications for the approximately 1,300 spots in the current freshman class, Princeton could choose the student body very carefully. And it chose, in large part, not by willingness and ability for profound learning, but by accomplishments, grades and other manifestations of this perfectionism. By rewarding the strive for perfection, Princeton instilled from day one that this should be our goal, a fact solidified by the attitude to which the University approaches management.

I don’t mean to say that the student body lacks this willingness and ability for profound learning, or even that Princeton did not consider it when making its selection. All of us have the potential to learn for learning’s sake, to question absolute truths, to push the boundaries of human understanding — but I fear that the weight of Princeton perfectionism is crushing that spirit.

Luke Massa is a sophomore from Ridley Park, Pa. He can be reached at lmassa@princeton.edu.