#but i would still like for people to be intellectually honest and less puerile. god knows i have my notps | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

realtalk-princeton · 6 years ago

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@maybach I would also love to hear your thoughts on Brown vs. Princeton, whenever you have time! Brown was one of my top choices (I was waitlisted), so it would be interesting for me to hear why you chose Princeton :)

Through the years of college, for sure, I’ve had moments where I was like “man, this is so damn hard! Wouldn’t it be great if I just went to Brown.” I’d be blazing like there’s no tomorrow, talking about memes in class instead of this difficult literature, and man everybody’s just shooting the breeze and going with the flow. I remember specifically actually about a year ago, I was so exhausted and because of our old break system, I still had finals after a break. I had no personal time, I was struggling in class, and then it just all was hitting me while I was taking a super late train out of Grand Central. I mean, it’s hard not to sometimes daydream of it. “If I was at Brown, I’m pretty confident I’d have a 4.0 with less effort. Pretty certain I would have had increased physical intimacy and perhaps maintained some relationships better.” This is all assuming I didn’t get addicted to certain drugs though, which IS a real possibility lol. And let me say that I’m really not trying to sound arrogant and promote a bad culture of comparison. I don’t think I’m the smartest person on this campus or people at Brown are dumb, it’s just not a comparable system. I also have to talk candidly about myself to answer these questions.

But you know, after all, I just said, I still don’t regret Princeton and if I went back, I’d do it again 100 times out of 100. It’s so easy to dislike where you are and see the outside as amazing. Also about a year ago, I hung out at Brown for a while and started to get to know some people pretty good. Like I said before, my family and family friends are all this group of super educated freaks at times. My cousin goes to Wharton, another cousin graduated from Columbia, another got into Yale, another goes to Williams and her bf that I’ve known since I was seven goes to Harvard. So as you can imagine, we all meet up during certain times and also have periods where everyone visits one person and we take turns. One of my cousin’s really close friends and his gf are at Brown, so I went one year. Totally opened my mind and made me realize that my pipe dream really was just a dream. For sure, I would not have adapted as well to the culture, which is militantly liberal, hipster capital, and chooses sentiment over facts. Just look at Brown’s blog (Fuck yeah Brown University! )lol! It tells you everything you need to know about the difference between us. It’s as disorganized, inconsistent, puerile, and vulgar as a large majority of the student body (joking to a certain extent). And I apologize in advance to the extremely modest and vanilla Brown students. They do exist, and I don’t want to stereotype too much. But, it’s clear that the culture was not as much for me. Social events revolve around weed, there’s no other way to say it. Sometimes even harder things. When I was at a party, a student joked to me “if you ain’t choking, you ain’t smoking.” One of my cousin’s friends from HS who is an athlete and used to be more seriously Muslim actually got addicted to coke and asked him for help. These, are extreme examples, but all I’m trying to say is that the social scene is for sure this uber hippie progressive clusterf..k (their words not mine) that I didn’t realize was not for me. Their event “Sex, Power, God” would NEVER happen here lol. The girl I know is pretty liberal too and even for them it’s not enough! It’s almost militant in many ways and the student body can be really immature about dissenting views that doesn’t occur here.

Lastly, this is going to be controversial, but I think it’s true and I’m going to say it’s another reason why I don’t regret not choosing Brown (among many reasons not even the ones just listed). It’s pretty clear to me the intellectual depth and academic system generally promote a “jack of all trades” type attitude to learning. And when a person adopts that mindset, there are certain negatives associated with it. As I’ve stated previously, I hang out with kids from SO MANY elite schools. And by and large, they are pretty similar. For sure though, I can put my hand on my heart and attest that at least in modern times (perhaps not older Brown alumni), the depth of discussions with Princeton students is on average, much deeper than Brown students. By this I mean, that Princeton students generally have much stronger critical thinking and analytical skills and have accumulated vast amounts of knowledge in a variety of intellectual disciplines that creates for truly great minds in my opinion. It’s shocking the difference of conversations on average I have with Princeton vs. Brown students. Princeton students, on average, have so much to add to any discussion and their ability to pump out intellectual horsepower is amazing. At Brown, the level of critical thinking is just shallow for so many people and it’s entirely driven by sentiment and feeling rather than fact and analysis. When I talk about politics with Princeton students, most people don’t like Trump. duh lol. But most of them have damn good reasoning to why and can specifically point to numerous policy issues and back up what they say with logic. It’s an engaging atmosphere. That’s not to say we don’t have shallow-minded people here, but at Brown, give me a break. They know more about memes than their actual classes and every political discussion is usually vulgar, ad hominem and contributes little. These aren’t even “dumb” people. One can be highly intelligent, but lack knowledge and critical thinking skills. They don’t learn a lot of the times lol and don’t truly accumulate information beyond a surface level. It’s shocking to me for example how much better our language development is in a shorter period of time when I’ve talked to Brown students abroad. Their expressive and “yolo” culture means that they randomly take classes all over the place that sure they might put work into, but it’s nothing compared to Princeton. “I took a class on hindu sex positions and its relation to oppressive social constructs.” Alright, but how does that help you to develop critical thinking skills? Are you actually going to remember much of anything you just talked about? How has your coursework changed the way you look at the world and think about certain issues in a constructive fashion? The answer to all of these questions is “not much.” For sure, some Brown students are not like this at all, but I’m talking about averages here and what is promoted.

But lol, I’ll end on this because I just bashed them a ton. I will say one thing that Brown for sure beats us in. Their academic system and structure promote much more adventure and confidence in their students. The average Brown student is FAR less concerned with prestige and they approach the world in a much more honest and open way that I actually admire. I met this girl who majored in chemistry but had no idea what to do after college. But that’s the thing, that’s totally alright! She went backpacking through Uzbekistan, took time to figure out life, and just went with her instincts instead of following like a herd. In the end, yeah she makes way less money than the average Princeton student and did end up settling down in NYC, but that freedom, that “I can do anything even if it’s totally crazy and I know nothing about it” attitude of Brown is actually helpful in some ways. Dare I say, it makes for happier alumni? At Princeton, people often are just out for the money, they follow a career path because they know it’s been done before and are scared to actually find themselves for who they truly are and do what may allow them to lead more purposeful lives. Brown shatters much of this with that shallow education system again lol. Well it’s not really that shallow. But the point is that if you spent the last 4 years learning completely random things that they barely remember (except for your major) and lived a life of expression and like a hippie, that can be good in some ways. They’re ready to face the world and lead in a way that suits them, not a pre-defined system.

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