In some ways, Princeton was just as I expected it to be: intellectually rigorous and challenging, diverse, broad and open-minded and dynamic and forward-looking. No great surprises here---although I do think my roommates were a great blessing. They were friendly, easy-going people whom I very quickly became comfortable with.
Some other things were more unexpected.
I never did expect to take a journalism class. Before I somehow ran into JRN 449 on the course listings I didn't even know those things existed, but hey, there we have it. Richard Bernstein's class was a great experience. Even if he didn't have much experience as a teacher, he was definitely an accomplished journalist, and we learnt a lot about journalism just by listening to him speak about his work and comment on the writing we did. And we didn't just get to listen to him, but also his colleagues at the New York Times whom we met during a class field-trip to the Times headquarters, and his friends and contacts whom he invited to the seminar as guest speakers. I learnt, above all, that journalism was about telling compelling stories, stories that matter, stories that people care about and are interested by. Many of the journalists whom we spoke to did not have the most engaging voices or manners of speaking--often they were just ordinary in that regard--but the things they had to say, they held my rapt attention even if they weren't being pitched in a dramatic, strongly-marketed way.
All those conversations in the dining hall too: one thing I took away from them was that your life was really as interesting as you made it out to be. In other words, it's about how the story is told. Looking back I am struck by how strongly, how fondly many people here recount the childhood memories they hold--think of Salvador or Ashu telling stories from their childhood, say. What happened to your memories? Did you really just repress them?
I also never expected to be anywhere near South Dakota. But Breakout Princeton seemed like a great program, so I applied. And I was accepted on the Rosebud trip, so I went. That really was a helluva experience. Never had anything like it; don't know if I'll ever have anything like it again. The whole issue the trip was centered around--youth suicide on Rosebud reservation--was a depressing one, but seeing all that was being done to try and change that, all that goodwill and hope and energy being directed towards the problem: that was honestly the most genuinely inspiring thing I've felt for a while. It was really inspiring to hear Veronica, while discussing the problems on the reservation during the final group reflection session in Omaha, declare "Melissa and I [our trip leaders] have promised to dedicate our lives to changing these things." On one level that just seems like naïve optimism; but considering they had spent an entire week listening to and seeing the magnitude of the issues, and after having seen that week what was being done, that seemed like more than just naïve optimism: it was a clear, convinced, determined commitment to try and change the world for the better. Now that stuff is supposed to be everywhere, especially in America---but I haven't quite seen it before so nearly clearly or tangibly.
I never expected I would be spending less than three weeks a year in Singapore---and even more than that I never expected to be (even grudgingly) fine with it. Delocalization: it is your new reality.
I usually think of the maths classes I took as "just what was expected", but looking back I see that was not entirely the case. Both analysis and linear algebra moved faster than expected, and covered their respective grounds in thorough, comprehensive, entirely non-trivial and non-superficial ways. Graph theory similarly hopped around quickly and covered more ground than I thought possible for a first course. You may think yourself unprepared to really "do mathematics" at this stage; but the truth is you've only had two basic courses and one departmental, and for that limited amount of coursework you've covered a lot of ground. So it's really up to you to be prepared, to go out there and find out more about what interests you and learn more about it. The most important thing college should teach you is not the material; it's the approach to learning, and the approach to the discipline.
And finally, just being in land of wide-eyed wonder and pervasive confidence has made me less of a jaded cynic. Being in a vigorous, curious intellectual community, and actually having lots of stuff to do, as opposed to loafing around for almost a year, certainly did not hurt there either. In any case, it's a wonderful feeling. The next three years ... I wonder what'll happen then?
No comments:
Post a Comment