April Awakening: Day Twenty-Seven 🌤️🌤️☁️
I walked around Princeton University’s campus today. My friend and I took a little trip to the city to hang out and hit up some of the near-campus stores they have. My mom always wanted me to go to Princeton. I kept thinking about buying things for her when we were at the University store, only to remember there’d be nowhere for her to put it. Still, it’s an absolutely beautiful campus. I did a field hockey camp and a basketball camp during a couple summers and did have a nice time. The dorms are outdated, but who cares when it’s such a nice exterior?
Walking around campus today reminded me of my own college experience at Northwestern. The campus was just as beautiful, even though it was definitely colder more months out of the year. The nearby town, Evanston, wasn’t nearly as ingrained with the campus as much as Princeton is. Still, I had a nice time at college. Definitely didn’t appreciate it while I was there. But more things from my own college experience came up today as well, especially when we were in a place to purchase your very own school pride.
I visited a lot of different universities in my time. Whether it was a sports camp or a fencing tournament, I’ve seen a lot. Notre Dame. Columbia. NYU. Temple. University of Detroit Mercy. Each school had something unique about it, but they weren’t mine. My school was the best. Purple and white always trumped any other school color. An air of superiority always accompanied my amble onto any subsequent campus. But why? Where did all that school pride get me? An expensive piece of paper and a couple thou in debt?
All schools have that sense of pride and community. Events around the school always have the name somewhere in it. Or the mascot. We had the N Club and the Cat’s Corner. Or some other nonsense. But honestly, being on another Ivy campus today, even though Northwestern is not technically an Ivy, I realized it’s all the same. These little enclaves seem to paint themselves as unique and different. I could see it as students were giving campus tours today. But I’m not sure how well they were selling it.
Perhaps I’m jaded to the state of higher education. It’s why I want the dorms converted into low-income housing “when all this is over.” But at the end of the day, at least in 2024, you’re paying for the name, not the experience. Like the Hermes shop in town, which my friend had never heard of and couldn’t understand why there was a line outside. Maybe we’ll get to a point where the prestige returns and you actually get your money’s worth again. But for now, I’ll just thank my lucky stars I don’t have to deal with the cloistered-in communities anymore.
I used to make fun of people in sororities or fraternities. “You’re paying for friends,” I’d say. I paid to be in a very expensive daycare and all that I studied has no application to my current life. What a way for a Wildcat to go.