Lighten up, Princeton

When I idealize Princeton, I think about “Mad Men.” I am Don Draper, every other woman in the world is fabulously good-looking; talk and alcohol flow freely. We work hard among beautiful architecture, working important and glamorous jobs dressed in the best New York fashions. Everyone parties hard and goes home happy.

The Princeton I am actually in is not like this. People are much too serious. Not in terms of studies; we all got here by seriously working hard in school. I mean that people are too serious when it comes to other people. They are nice, they are polite, and they are distant.

It is difficult for Princetonians to be familiar with other Princetonians. When I say “familiar,” I mean the way one would treat a friend. The word implies a feeling of knowledge and comfort. Before I came to Princeton, when I met someone I didn’t know, I would speak with that person for a while and try to find out if we were compatible. If I liked them, I’d act familiar with them, since they probably liked me also. It’s a simple, logical step that Princetonians seem afraid to take unless they feel like they must.

My first month at Princeton as a freshman was my favorite time here for this reason. Everyone was desperate to make friends, so they’d befriend anyone who talked to them and seemed likeable. I could sit with any person I wanted to sit with in the dining hall and expect to have a warm conversation about where I was from and what I was planning to study. That random person would be familiar with me because they were open to meeting a new person. Almost all of my closest friends here now, as a sophomore, are people I met in the first three days of freshman week.

Now, the bonds of friendship have hardened and well-defined cliques have formed. I have never been a fan of cliques; they seem to arbitrarily limit people. Breaking through these stiff, static bonds to try to make new ones has been an almost impossible challenge. The “Mad Men” ideal is gone.

Why do Princetonians seem to have such a problem with meeting new people? It is the same reason that Jacob Reses identified in his column “The fear of being unremarkable.” We are all terribly insecure. Nobody wants to be a nerd who got into a good school. We want to prove we are also cool enough to belong. Paradoxically, this limits social freedom by making people try to out-cool others. People are constantly trying to be as cool as they can, but that makes them less fun to be around. When was the last time you sat back and spoke freely, without checking yourself for sounding weird or unintelligent?

A person who sits back and speaks freely, without checking themselves, is more interesting than someone who censors themselves before speaking. Doing this is difficult, because a relaxed person would be immediately ridiculed for saying something weird or unintelligent, since everyone else is trying so hard to be smart and cool. That relaxed, easy, familiar way of speaking is too dangerous for a Princetonian to try. The norm is to be stiff and critical. It makes for a wholly restrictive and unpleasant environment.

This is why PrincetonFML.com is so wildly popular. Since we can’t admit in public that we’re doing something stupid or weird, we admit it anonymously. It’s all the satisfaction of speaking freely without all the potential personal ridicule.

Why is this important, you may ask? Because we are here to go to college, not only to take classes. We should be here to have the same college experience as our friends at other schools (but in a nicer place with smarter people, of course). We are failing! I have an anecdote to prove I am not just making this all up. A friend of mine goes to University of California, Berkeley, which is by all means a good school. She lives in a triple with two other girls, and they had a conflict in their room because they all had boyfriends and wanted to sexile each other. All three of the girls in the room met their boyfriends in college. How many couples can you think of that formed at Princeton? How many entire rooms have to make a sign-up sheet to use the beds?

So allow yourself to be Don Draper or Peggy Olson. If someone makes fun of you for being relaxed, it’s because they’re too afraid to be relaxed themselves. The coolest people I know here are the people who are unafraid to do what they want. In the words of Pauly D of “Jersey Shore,” “You do you.”

Luke Seale is a mechanical engineering major from Santa Barbara, Calif. He can be reached at lseale@princeton.edu.