Let’s talk about sex
Last week I sat, panicked, in the waiting room of McCosh Health Center. I was going to die; I was sure of it.
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Last week I sat, panicked, in the waiting room of McCosh Health Center. I was going to die; I was sure of it.
When I opened the September issue of The Princeton Tory at breakfast this past week, I was met with the bold-print title “Plan Your Time At Princeton,” under which was placed a photograph of a man reading a very, very, very old book. Intrigued, and hoping to discover the name of whatever first-edition manuscript had informed this crash-course guide for freshmen, I read on.
You need to go to college. You have to get an education to be successful. You must have a neat, little degree on your wall to get a job. It’s always an ultimatum, and it seems almost ubiquitous for our generation and the ones that will follow: Without a college degree, employment in the modern economy is virtually unattainable. And yet CollegeBoard, the very gatekeeper of universities, reports that the average tuition and fees bill from a public, four-year university has increased beyond the rate of inflation by 27 percent in just the last five school years; the average for private universities like Princeton is still a staggering 14 percent increase since the 2008-09 school year.
Every Monday and Wednesday evenings, a handful of other freshmen and I meet for an hour and a half for our writing seminar. It makes sense. Many other colleges and universities have similarly mandatory courses implemented with the same goal of teaching “college writing.” These courses, including the University’s writing seminars, are meant to smooth out the crinkles of variation that exist across the high school experiences of every student by “focus[ing] on the skills necessary for effective critical reading and writing.” In my personal experience, however, the Princeton Writing Program has largely failed to achieve this goal.
Since every issue of The Tory, Princeton’s major conservative student publication, is pushed underneath my door, I tend to flip through it and scan anything that happens to catch my interest. In this particular issue, I was immediately drawn to “Checking My Privilege,” an article written by Tal Fortgang ’17. Once I got past the irrelevant, anti-liberal rhetoric — comparing the use of the phrase “check your privilege” to the descent of “an Obama-sanctioned drone” did little to help me understand Fortgang’s argument — I realized that Fortgang wasn’t wrong. He just didn’t get it.
One of the first emails I received from my residential college adviser upon my matriculation to the University was a list of the bathroom codes for Holder Hall—bathroom codes that I would never need to use myself but was only given so that I could be a resource to visiting female friends. As a male, I do not need to type in a four-digit access code to use my restroom like my female counterparts; unlike those outside the women’s restrooms, the keypads installed outside the doors of the men’s restrooms within Princeton, although present, are entirely for show. Anyone who has lived in one of the University’s dormitories has noticed this phenomenon, and my search through the annals of The Daily Princetonian revealed that I am not the first student to comment on it in my column. Where my dispute with this bathroom bias differs from my predecessors, however, is that while their main concern is the archaic view of females as delicate and helpless that this policy tolerates, mine is the ideals of “American” masculinity that the bathroom code discrepancy upholds.
I, like many students here, spent my final afternoon before classes squeezed onto a couch to watch the Super Bowl. Besides marking the culmination of the National Football League season, the Super Bowl also doubles as a celebration of American culture that is second only to the Fourth of July. Game-day parties serve all-American Buffalo wings as hors d’oeuvres and all-American burgers as entrées while attendees enjoy the all-American sport of football. It is therefore unsurprising that many of the hit Super Bowl commercials have a subtle, patriotic undertone meant to tickle our egos, making us nod and think, “that’s right, this is America, and we’re still on top.”And so as a Coca-Cola commercial flicked through scenes of different aspects of American society as a multilingual rendition of “America the Beautiful” played, I considered it an obvious attempt to celebrate the United States’ diversity while still reminding viewers that we are always united by our flag and, of course, by Coke.
There I sat, alone in my room (and for all I knew alone in all of Holder) and thinking of finals yet to be studied for and paintings yet to be finished, while Lorde’s drawling notes eased out of my stereo. I’d only ever been mildly interested in Lorde’s music since her recent rise to fame, but for whatever reason I found solace in her songs during the lonely moments I was on campus during the last week of break. About halfway through each play through of her album "Pure Heroine" (which, with my blinds drawn and lights dimmed, seemed an appropriate title), the familiar lyrics of “Royals” began. And through the haze of my Heroine high I raised my glass to Lorde.
It’s been discussed and debated countless times within the past few decades. This very newspaper has published an ample amount of editorials concerning it. And I, privileged and protected by my middle-class American upbringing, began to push the issue out of mind, attributing it to the lingering prejudices of the generation before mine.
I believe that genuineness is a central core of the human condition, and that without it much of what it means to be human is lost — a deeply metaphysical claim for a freshman who doesn’t even really know what metaphysics is. Yet psychologists, counselors, philosophers and even businessmen agree that authenticity is necessary for any type of real connection to flourish. For any true relationship to exist stably, it must have a true foundation — a genuine foundation.
I love to people-watch, especially when I am in unfamiliar places. So, naturally, when my boyfriend and I finished up our lunch during our day trip to Sedona, I was content to simply observe as my food digested. The patio, hugging the sidewalk outside the restaurant, provided generous opportunities for me to survey both my fellow diners and those passing by. However, it was not the occasional mountain-lady walking by and sporting a “vegan love” T-shirt that gave me reason to shake my head, but rather the other patrons in the pizzeria, those who I have begun to call “modern couples.”
Halfway through Frosh Week, as I sat on the chapel steps with a handful of other freshmen meeting our academic adviser for the first time, I was invited to observe. My adviser asked us to look at the students around us and see how many stood out; how many, out of the thousands of success-driven students at Princeton, all with impressive resumes and exceptional talents, really stood out? She brought to my attention the absence of unnaturally dyed hair, of unconventional piercings and of tattoos too large to be concealed under a suit skirt or a collared shirt among the student body.
As I poured myself some water at the reception for President Eisgruber’s installation, the clink of the ice cubes tumbling into my glass vaguely upset me in some unidentifiable way. It wasn’t until after I strode back to my friends on the lawn and saw identical glasses in their hands that I realized that what I’d felt was a sense of surprise: At an outdoor venue with a large number of people in attendance, I was used to plastic cups, not glass ones, and I was wholly unprepared to find myself drinking from the latter.