Dear Readers,

    Nothing new or exciting has happened to me or Princeton since I last wrote, so I’ll take this opportunity to comment on a topic that is prevalent and very relevant to each and every one of us. I don’t think it’d be satisfying to try to sum this issue up in a few words, so I’ll describe it as the genuine answer behind every outsiders’ question of “What’s it like at [insert entity here, e.g. Princeton]?,” the frustratingly enigmatic yet truthful reply of “Well, it depends…”, or simply the fact that we can all be shaped by one institution or community yet our paths and careers there can be drastically different…

    Obviously, everyone leads a unique life; yet that is much larger than the scale of what I am referring to here. Take primary school: those six years of life confined in one classroom, one soccer field and one playground for eight hours a day. If you can, recall your classmates, the people who spent every week day and a few hours after school experiencing the exact same lectures delivered by your teacher, doing the same amount of dreadful homework and projects, and partaking in some sports or activities that you tirelessly pursued in your free time.

    From almost anyone else’s perspective (especially that of grown-ups), you were sharing a childhood in the sense that you seemed to be having the same experiences and exposure to the world’s fascinations as you pored over insects and dragged pencils across paper.

    Yet, I’m sure you can remember the many exclusive groups of friends that reigned over different areas on the playground and enjoyed very different things. There may even have been a “popular” crowd and a “nerdy” club. But bullying aside, my point is that each and every one of your classmates (yourself included, of course) had a different lifestyle even within the school’s gates. Thus, no matter what community you become part of, your experiences within it will always differ from your neighbors’.

    Is this fact significant, you ask? Maybe, but maybe not. I dedicate an entire article to it, however, due to the sole reason that I find this fact very interesting and in some ways ironic. We base our choices on where to go to school and what industry to enter given information about the experiences of others; we expect to receive an answer that doesn’t involve context-dependency when inquiring about what some experience or other is like… For the most part, this behavior is not irrational, yet it is not optimal either as it makes us forget that, ultimately, we have the ability to shape our experiences to some extent.

    Thus, perhaps the best strategy is to aim for the best (based on other’s experiences) whilst keeping in mind that some luck and much self-initiative is needed when shaping our own. Ah, but who am I to say all this; after all, I know no one else’s experiences but my own.

    Sincerely, Laiyin