O Freshmen, Paradise Is Yours!

Will the competition overwhelm me? Is joining the band good? When we get there, will Dad ask his bothersome questions? Will Mom insist on making my bed? Would a year’s job in a homeless shelter have been better--more real-worldish? Will anyone think Tama Janowitz a cool writer? What will black-white relations be like? Will I get a smoker as a roommate? My allergies, will they flare up?

This month, thousands of young people have been imagining--as one would a distant country--their first days in college. Over the years, they have told me that during these pre-college weeks all manner of questions buzz through their minds. “Hamlet had nothing on me; I considered every possibility before I set foot on campus,” one young woman told me.

Becoming freshmen (or frosh, as many prefer) is almost a national rite of passage in August and September.

Freshmen are a great subject because they are so fascinating and so little-known. It is a shame that anthropologist Margaret Mead, who wrote of child development in “Coming of Age in Samoa,” did not investigate freshmen at Columbia University where she taught. I can picture her at a freshman party, leaning on her giant staff, rapidly taking notes. She could have penned another classic: “Coming of Age in American Colleges: the Freshman Moment.” In such a book, she probably would have told us that freshmen live in a unique culture, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, of singular style and expressiveness.

From secondary schools all over the globe, from all ranks of society, they come. Often, they have struggled to get into a special college. They represent triumphs in theeyes of their parents, counselors, advanced-placement teachers, coaches and loves. For the colleges receiving them, the newcomers are an annual tonic. They rejuvenate us, bringing a powerful infusion of new energy. Moreover, professors are quietly interested each year in whether the freshmen will bring a different spirit. “What are the freshmen like?” “Do you have any insights into the freshmen yet?” ask many of my professor-friends in the school year’s opening weeks, seemingly hoping for something transforming.

Colleges are more than curious about their newest citizens, they are extremely generous to them. They are treated as Mead said the Pacific Island children were: as progeny, treasured, indulged and forgiven most--but not all--of their failures. After all, the newcomers are coping in a new environment. We talk endlessly about their “potential” and allow them a year to let this potential collect itself. Even upperclassmen, who often laugh at freshman naivete, calling them “clueless,” still identify with them because they, too, remember their own artless, Chaplinesque first year.

Actually, freshmen need all the empathy and support they can get. College brochures do not say it, but the first year is stressful. Although the newcomers are exuberant (“A room full of freshmen is a room full of smiles,” it is said here), their enthusiasm conceals many tiny anxieties. So much rides on doing well, perhaps too much. I have sat through many sessions trying to wrestle a freshman’s anxieties--named and nameless--into a manageable mass. However, as the year progresses, self-confidence and self-mastery gain ground. A recent letter expresses this process well: “The year was like an experiment, with a few downs and many ups, ending with me growing a lot from inside.” But, at the year’s start, self-doubt can be so bad that a few students believe they are the admissions office’s “mistake.” Thanks to heaven, this passes. In fact, the reverse feeling sets in. It used to be said at Stanford: “The first few days you wonder how you got in; in the second week, you wonder how these other people did.”

Freshmen are not invincible. But they are equal to the challenges. Living with 1,600 of them in the course of eight years, I am impressed by their resilience, both physical and psychological. Through average grades, colds and chicken pox, bike accidents, failed romances, they survive. Many go on to prosper, becoming deeper and more thoughtful. Increasingly, I think that they are also more motivated by the passion of learning, seeking out intellectual rigors. When all else fails, though, freshmen can turn to their specialty--humor, jokes, pranks, theater, language-play. Never underestimate their appetite for escapism. This could be the most important key to their endurance.

At a spring talent show, I heard a freshman bard salute his peers in mock-Shakespearean verse. He captured the experience:

O brave new creatures, ye freshmen

The firmament of learning crowns thee with gold

No species more naive and puny but none more bold

Congratulate thy mates, smile, sing and clap

We have won the year, and therefore no dunce’s cap.

Paradise was ours,

And I bid memory hold it fresh.