At Yale, we miss the great adventure

Thoughts From Here
    By Sonia Lin

I split my time between my usual school activities and plotting for the Great Big Adventure. This is wreaking havoc on my attention span. Whereas before e-mail was the primary distraction device, now exciting Adventure-plotting web sites have further crippled my hopes of completing the most straightforward assignments in a timely fashion. I watch in horror as whole afternoons slip by, lost to my schizophrenic net-surfing on the computer.

A spring-time Adventure beckons, and I imagine studying Kafka and Kundera in Prague, interning at a United Nations organization in Geneva, riding a bicycle with Beijing citizens in China. Now that I have decided to take off into the world next semester, dozens of possibilities stretch out before me like so many shiny promises.

SHAWN CHENG/YH

"But why would you want to leave Yale?" I am often asked. There are so many possibilities on campus already and we have only eight semesters to revel in it all. This is a true observation: our time here is fleeting, and yet how many of us know why it is so precious?

Yale students may be some of the most intelligent and disciplined 20-year-olds around. We have successfully figured out and completed the formula for gaining entrance to one of the most prestigious universities. Nobody arrived at Phelps Gate by accident. We maneuvered our way through the standard American system for academic success, for many reasons, but certainly by design. And because we are so adept at working within the system, we rarely challenge or question it.

How many of us, however, find ourselves here simply because it is not very easy to get here, and we could? Though few of us are at Yale solely because it is a prestigious place to be, few of us also know exactly what our personal stake in this university is. By choosing to matriculate, we have in some way validated a system of hierarchy and selectivity, and many of us have allowed this system to govern our actions and goals. We allow success, as defined by our environment, to fill in for achievement on our own terms.

Looking for a more personalized sense of accomplishment can be a lonely, unheralded journey here. Students are so poised to attain the best that they don't often ask whether the best is what they actually want. Is singing in the most polished a cappella group on campus as fun as singing in a more relaxed group? Is a seminar with that renowned professor as enlightening as merely reading his book would be? What makes secret societies desirable besides their mystery and exclusivity?

Of course, much of what Yale offers is valuable because it is time-tested and has proven to be so. We are offered endless resources and opportunities. The professors are smart, the students are smart, we have goofy, if geeky, fun. We should be proud and happy about our school.

Nevertheless, I hear dissatisfied murmurs from many bright, talented people around me and wonder why. Students here are seeking something to throw themselves into headlong, something to believe in. They sign up for different organizations, take up different causes, pack their schedules. I see them as seeking ways to achieve something according to their own standards of accomplishment, instead of simply relying on vague, general standards of reputation.

I want to do this too. I'm planning to leave campus in the hopes of making something of myself where there are no general standards or clear hierarchies except those that I take on for myself. The idea of choosing my own adventure excites me tremendously. The prospect of returning to school next year is equally exciting.

The lovely thing about vacations is that they provide opportunities to break away from a situation and then to return fresh and recharged. To retreat entirely and yet still be able to come back in a little while; this is what I long for by the time Thanksgiving break rolls around, if not for weeks beforehand. The different perspectives and challenges that await me overseas will only serve to further personalize my college experience when I return: this is the shiny promise I see in letting go of one rare semester at Yale.

Recent Herald Columns by this Columnist:
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• College teenyboppers, act your age, 10/8/99
• Combatting American cynicism, 9/24/99
• Yale's annual honeymoon bittersweet, 9/10/99

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