We often call Duke a “Gothic Wonderland.” Eager visitors and tour guides alike use this term. It’s all over Instagram, especially during the excitement of Blue Devil Days or after the blanketing of Main Quad with a gentle snow. It is certainly not an inaccurate description of our beautiful campus.
But I’ve come to think that “wonderland” is an apt description on another level—Duke is not the real world. Apart from the Hogwarts-esque buildings, stepping onto Duke’s campus is like stepping into an alternate reality. Call it the “Duke bubble” or whatever you will, life is uniquely different here.
Whenever I go off-campus or go home for a break, this hyper-reality becomes brutally clear. At Target I see parents and their kids buying food and school supplies. When I make nursing-home visits in Durham, I talk with elderly people who are most excited about seeing their grandkids and are happy simply because their most recent visit to the doctor went well. And, when I go home, I see my dad on the phone with business calls and my mom busy with volunteer work.
At Duke, I am busy writing papers, studying for exams, going to debate practice, trying to manage weekend social events and keeping up with all my friends.
“College” may describe something academic, but “college” is also a social phenomenon. On both counts, Duke has a way of making us forget what life is like beyond the bricks of our Gothic Wonderland.
On the academic front, it is easy to overlook how exceptional we really are. None of us need to have our egos augmented – our parents, schools and now our University do enough of that – but in the throes of rigorous academic competition, we usually compare ourselves only with those at Duke. We forget that in terms of academics we are among the very top students in this country and around the world. My class, the class of 2017, offered admission to 12 percent of the 31,805 that applied. Duke’s 6,500 undergraduates are in the top .02 percent of college age Americans.
Competition for internships, research positions, graduate school admission and jobs is intense, I know. Part of the intensity comes from holding ourselves to the ridiculous standards set by other Duke students without acknowledging those graduating from other schools or not going to college at all. Our grades may be based on the performance of other Duke students, but our sense of our own intelligence and talents should not be. Just being mediocre at a school like Duke is a world-class achievement that few can claim. And people should be proud, not ashamed, of that.
Pre-professional Duke culture sucks students into feeling like their life-long goals are unattainable unless they’re curing cancer, captain of the crew team and simultaneously acing each and every course. It’s important for us to recognize that Duke’s academic rigor is a draw for students. But true success in the real world is based on more than just grades and numbers, and it is important to remember that we are at a place that promotes something slightly different.
Regarding the social aspect of “college”, it is easy to forget what social life and friendships are like in the real world. At Duke there are always people around. Whether it’s on the C-1, eating dinner at the Bryan Center or studying in Perkins, it can actually be kind of difficult to find a place on campus where one can avoid seeing people and be truly alone. We get used to living in close quarters with roommates and other friends. Overall, most of us spend way more time around other people than we do by ourselves. We are almost made to feel bad if we are alone for an extended period of time – wondering how other people have so many friends and we do not. The truth is, however, after graduation, we will not be surrounded by so many people we know in such close proximity.
That’s further complicated by the fact that we won’t have groups already in place to facilitate friendships like we have at Duke. It makes sense that we develop friendships with those who have similar interests and participate in similar activities on campus. And, as students with limited amounts of free time, it makes sense that we do a lot of our socializing within the planned events of clubs and living groups. It is great that Greek life organizations, selective living groups and student clubs can bring people together to form (hopefully) lasting friendships. Even for those of us who are not in a Greek organization or an SLG, they provide great opportunities for having fun with friends and meeting people. And it’s true that some of my best friends are people I met in groups—like my campus ministry.
But groups like these are unique to college campuses. And I worry that sometimes they might keep us from practicing an important life skill—making and keeping friends without the help of an established organization. At Duke, it may be that a lot of our friendships are based on common interests and group membership than on genuine attachment to another person. Don’t some of our friendships just keep going because we are in the same place doing the same things with people in certain groups? In the real world, sustaining friendships means making connections with other individuals. This requires an investment of time and emotional effort far beyond what most of our college friendships do. No wonder recent graduates seem desperate to flock back to campus during Homecoming and tag all their reunion photos with #nevergraduate.
These academic and social phenomena are not unique to Duke—they come with the college experience anywhere, though they might be slightly more intense here. What isn’t? College is a unique social and academic experience, and I’m thankful to be having it at Duke. However, I can’t say that it will leave us prepared for the real world in every way. We should certainly enjoy it while we are here. But we should also remember that we inhabit a small subset of a much bigger world, full of outrageous expectations and peculiar social conventions.
So try to find a quiet spot and learn to spend a little time alone. Think more carefully about your friendships and cut yourself some academic slack. You certainly don’t want to reach the end of senior year and realize that you’ve become like Alice, running down the rabbit hole into her own Wonderland: “never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”
Zach Heater is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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