Yale Daily News

I think Yale should issue every student a golden ticket, Willy Wonka style. Every student could use his ticket to get into one class of his choice, no questions asked, but he'd only get one shot in four years so he'd have to choose carefully. And some plucky little freshman could walk past a room full of junior history majors who blew their tickets ages ago, go straight up to the professor of the seminar on Abraham Lincoln, who happens to be the ONE figure this boy has dreamed about studying -- who knows, maybe this boy feels a cosmic connection to the subject; maybe he is Lincoln reincarnated -- and all he'd have to say is, "Here's my ticket, I am in your class."

Done.

There is a side to Yale that makes us vaguely stressed. I'm not talking about grades or work; we can do something about them. I'm talking about networking. I'm talking about classes you can't get into unless you know a professor who knows the professor, and the fact that all you hear as a freshman is "Don't worry, no one knows what he wants to do when he gets here!" which, it becomes more and more apparent over time, is not exactly true.

I'm talking about what a couple of my friends and I call "Yale bullshit."

Yale bullshit is the pressure to promote or "sell" an image of yourself (not your soul, it's not prostitution), which results from our smallish student body and a surplus of ambition.

It compels you to dominate your section when you haven't done the reading, to want the job more than want to be qualified for it, to fixate on a destination when you've barely started the trip.

It's all about the future.

And hey, you should participate in the networking world. It is smart to befriend your TA's. We don't live in a meritocracy.

It feels dangerous, though, because if you're marketing yourself this early, what if you are so taken with the idea of becoming the next Maureen Dowd that you forget whether you enjoy writing? I already get confused between what I like and what I think I should. Sometimes I can't tell who I'm attracted to.

Sometimes it feels like there are 200 people in the world and I know 100.

This means you can try to get on a first-name basis with Harold Bloom, and it means there are only so many hockey players you can get with before you're known as a hockey slut. You have to think about the image you're cultivating.

And it's strange because if you ever want to go crazy in your life and have a great time, when can you do that if not now? Wait a couple years and you won't be a crazy kid anymore; you'll be a f--k-up. You should be a wild child now while you're still something of a child -- except, um, right, Yale's not that big, and people will hear about it.

Everything that has been on my mind lately is something I don't want to print in a scene column because I can think of at least one person at Yale I don't want to read it, for widely varying reasons.

I'm not writing anonymously about everything I observe in my life. I am writing about the Yale community, which is not a large one.

I don't think I'd trade the benefits of a smallish size for the anonymity that would allow us to act out, but I do worry.

I worry that I don't I know very many people who know how to have fun.

I might just know a lot of people who know how to get drunk three times a week. Weekends are great, but your weekdays should not be a series of trudging back and forth to LC, worrying, and holding out for the weekend when you can forget everything again.

I'm defining this idea of Yale bullshit in a vague way because its vagueness is precisely what makes it so annoying! We constantly feel there is something more productive we should be doing. We feel guilty, but for no reason.

However (Oh, thank God for that however! Can you tell I'm going to end on a brighter note? I am an incurably optimistic ender even if I need 700 words to complain first) vague guilt does not take over my life for two reasons:

First, I have never had a semester without at least one class that did something great for me. Maybe I'm not sitting on the edge of my seat during lecture, but I consistently have one or two classes that change the way I think, and this is key. Last semester I had nights when I hallucinated I was Dostoevsky (mostly because I fell this time, and he had epilepsy, i.e. the "falling" sickness … it was a really strange night.)

Second, I am a little crazy.

A little bit of crazy is a wonderful chaser to the sting of Yale bullshit in your throat. Note the word "little" to indicate moderation. I don't mean posting drugged up pictures of yourself on the internet, I just mean running around cross campus on a Monday afternoon.

My point is you think you have to meticulously project an image now, but in a few years you can't just skip work on a Thursday because you're hungover.

I try and follow my whims as far as the sometimes irresponsible and short of the reckless. At least this way I'll have some stories to tell.



Susannah Bragg doesn't boast, despite her surname.