A Letter From Princeton, Four Years After Exeter

Almost four years have passed since I was an Exonian, and it’s hard to summarize them. There have been wonderful times, like trips to debate tournaments with my closest friends or meeting Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman. Sad times, like a disastrous exam or a breakup. And, for sure, a few times when I wasn’t sure I would make it through alive: taking real analysis, writing 10,000 words in a week, flying Malaysia Airlines or trying to walk onto the Princeton crew team.What I can’t believe, looking back on it all, is how much I’ve changed (and, I hope, grown) in those four years. It sounds crazy to me today, but when I was a senior at Exeter, I felt that I’d reached the end destination, that college would be a breeze compared to what I’d been through, that I knew who I was. I couldn’t have been more wrong.The first thing that happened to me, after moving into my dorm room and going to my first college lecture and first college party, was feeling something I’d never really felt at Exeter: loneliness. I hadn’t appreciated it at the time, but Exeter is a small place, and in one respect wonderfully so. It’s hard not to make friends at the Harkness table, in club sports or in dorm meetings.This is not true of Princeton, or of most colleges. You make your own community; it doesn’t just happen. For me, that meant joining the debate team, forming study groups in math and economics classes and bickering at eating club (it’s a Princeton thing). I still see my Exeter friends, but our friendships feel different now —mature, aware of the years, as if we haven’t grown apart so much as grown in parallel, so that when we reunite, we can pick up where we left off and yet also can appreciate how each has changed in the other’s absence.There is, I think, something special about the friendships I made at Exeter. Maybe it’s that growing up together produces a bond that is harder to replicate when you are older and more guarded. In my mind, I associate it with the “big family” quality of Exeter dorms, since everyone is there at night, with their doors open during study hours. In college, that goes away, and while you may be close with your roommates, the dorm as a whole has about as much culture as an apartment building.Academics, too, are different. I’ve come to value how great the Harkness discussions were (the college equivalents are uniformly less interesting), how teachers opened up their lives to me (I only became similarly close with a handful of my professors) and how interactive learning was (you’ll spend more time reading or doing problem sets, and less time in class, which will mostly be lectures). But there is a lot to look forward to.At Princeton, I’ve spent most of my time studying economics and statistics, or taking classes related to those areas, like math or politics. This fall, for example, I took four classes: one on the social science of war with Gary Bass, who covered the conflict in Yugoslavia from the front lines as a reporter for The Economist; one on game theory with Dilip Abreu that covered strategic situations from auctions to collective bargaining; a seminar on international institutions with Robert Keohane, the leading academic in the field and a graduate class on macroeconomics with Alan Blinder, who was the Fed’s vice chairman in the 1990s. And that’s just one term!You’ll probably pick something different than economics, but what I hope you find is a subject about which you really care and in which you become an expert. Reaching that level of understanding—being able to follow, and maybe even contribute, to its cutting-edge intellectual debates—was for me a profoundly rewarding experience. So is dabbling in something you never have tried before. I’ll be taking a class on filmmaking in the spring, for instance.Exploration can start now, with small steps. It did for me: When I was a senior at Exeter, I started a blog on economics because I wanted to learn more about the subject. If you can’t imagine focusing and picking a major, take a look at the May 17, 2012 issue of The Exonian, which is available on the old website. You’ll see me, four years ago, trying to figure it out.College is liberation compared to Exeter. No check-ins, no out-of-towns, no dickeys. And, like many fledging countries, you’ll probably find freedom overwhelming as a freshman. My best advice here is: may you make many small mistakes. The best friends I’ve made, I’ve made because we stayed up until 3 a.m., because we both took a class that was probably too hard for us or because we were so busy trying to join the same eating club that we didn’t go to class the first week of our sophomore winters.Not all of those were worth it, and I’ve learned what rules I really must impose upon myself, like scheduling myself for homework, classes, reading, writing, exercise, meals, debate and so on. Not that I always lead a balanced life. I wouldn’t recommend that. There is too much worth doing all-out, like when my blog led to a part-time writing job at The Washington Post. Do I regret staying up late, when I could get my best work done, for two straight years every weeknight? Not for a second. I’d type away in Whig Hall, a grand old white-marble building that is headquarters for the debate team and other political groups and wait for each of the major papers to go to press and then scramble to compile the relevant public-policy news.Writing about people doing economic research and working on policy, in turn, led me to want to do those things myself. I’ve spent four years drifting towards math and statistics more than I ever expected when I was a freshman. That’s how I, most interested in history and writing at Exeter, ended up into probability theory and machine learning at Princeton. Along the way, I met the professors who would eventually urge me to apply for the Rhodes Scholarship. (Tip: Want to meet professors? Attend their office hours.)The Rhodes process is nuts. You need a personal statement and CV, eight letters of recommendation and a formal endorsement from your university. Then you need to be one of dozen selected for an interview in each region (mine spanned New Jersey, Connecticut and New Hampshire). You’re grilled by a panel of Rhodes Scholars. On mine: the editor-in-chief of the news website Slate, a Harvard Law professor tipped for the Supreme Court and the only counterterrorism adviser who served both Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice. The night before interviews, you have to attend the world’s most intimidating cocktail party with these people and the eleven other finalists. Of the dozen interviewed in each district, two win.I’ll be studying for a master’s degree in economics at Oxford. For those that are now stressed over colleges, maybe see it this way: wherever you end up, the next phase of your life is about to begin, one full of exciting, rewarding and new experiences. I am embracing that as well.