Five weeks ago, I made an impulsive decision: I bought a plane ticket to Connecticut. Partly swayed by the efficiency of e-commerce, the purchase was primarily motivated by a looming, unfulfilled pledge. One of my best friends had recently been accepted at Yale, and I had promised to visit before the year was out.
The day I arrived in New Haven, my friend and his roommates were hosting a party. Officially, it was a birthday party. But it was really an excuse to attempt a solid night of debauchery.
I acquainted myself beforehand with my friend’s roommates, who were all doctoral candidates in psychology. They were what you might expect from a random sample of Yale grad students: verbose, erudite, charismatic, and kempt. They all had impressive academic backgrounds. As undergraduates, each had acquired a formidable body of professional publications, conference appearances, and laboratory experience. At Yale, their academic prosperity continued. With fancy laptops and state-of-the-art neuro-imaging hardware, they pumped out cutting-edge research under some of the most renowned researchers in the world.
The day I arrived in New Haven, my friend and his roommates were hosting a party. Officially, it was a birthday party. But it was really an excuse to attempt a solid night of debauchery.
Initially, they concealed their academic prowess; despite their intimidating successes, they were surprisingly normal. They dressed with a planned unpretentiousness and blended into the run-down student home without any irony. After mentioning my interests in analytic philosophy, the conversation eventually runs dry.
At 10:15 p.m., the first guests arrive: one graduate student and his non-academic friend. The non-academic is largely responsible for the pair’s awkwardness, as his dark, concealing clothes classify him as an outsider. The academic is a quick-talking psychology student like the rest. His non-academic counterpart is a business-oriented graduate from Temple.
At 11:00 p.m., an entourage of undergrads shows up. At first, the roommates are not impressed. But when it is finally discovered that one of the roommates is sexually pursuing his undergraduate research assistant, the vexing underage contingent becomes a full-blown source of amusement.
At 11:30 p.m., the house is at capacity. Gentlemanly, my friend introduces me to three people. Though it was an artifact of my enveloping inebriation or not, these people are atypically impressive. The tall, 23 year-old Californian worked on philosopher Daniel Dennett’s farm last summer and is now editing his forthcoming book; the thin woman with curly brown hair has released three books for young adults with a major American publishing company; and the woman with the mohawk is a third-year undergraduate, doubling as a research assistant, who has achieved laudable aesthetic acclaim for her poetry and paintings of sexual organs.
I am, like them, in a substance-induced good mood, which prevents me from being silenced by their achievements. Instead, I inquire about Dennett’s eccentricities, the distinction between fiction and literature, and the aesthetic value of painting vaginas.
By 11:45 p.m., cognition is at its worst. Out of nowhere, a blonde Australian girl in shiny clubwear singles me out. She asks loudly for my name and seems fascinated that she has never met me before. She asks me some questions, and I respond with satisfactory charm. Or so it seems. She starts embarrassing herself.
Once I exude an acceptable level of intelligence and a premeditated interest in her work, she starts telling me about her academic background. But first, she asks me if I know the Latin name for fruit flies. Unfortunately, I do not, and this puzzles her. “How can you be in neuroscience if you don’t know what drosophila are?”, she asks. I tell her that I am not a neuroscientist, and she nods hesitatingly.
It turns out that she is a third-year doctoral candidate in neuroscience who did her undergraduate degree at a fancy Californian university. She does invasive research on drosophila, but would never harm a “cute” monkey, unlike some of her sadist colleagues. I don’t learn any more before her friends decide to take her home.
At 12:30 a.m., my night is done. Before I get to my room to sleep, my friend asks me if I am having a good time. I say yes, and tell him a little bit about my evening. Annoyingly, he knows what the Latin name for a fruit fly is, although he is far less surprised at my ignorance than the Australian was.
The next day, after nursing our hangovers, my friend and I make our way over to his lab.
She asks me if I know the Latin name for fruit flies. Unfortunately, I do not, and this puzzles her.
Surprisingly, the lab is not empty. There are three people there other than ourselves: two post-docs and one graduate student.
We each do a little bit of work, and two hours later, my friend is ready to leave. After dinner, though, we go back to the lab to do some more work. It is 11 p.m. on Sunday, and the lab is half-full. People are drinking coffee and analysing brain images on wide-screen monitors. I try my best to blend in and quietly read my articles.
After spending another hour there, my friend and I head home. We are too tired to do anything else. The evening ends without event.
The next four days have a similar structure: we wake up early, drink espresso, and head towards campus. We spend about 10 hours each day working in solitude-him at the laboratory, me at the library. Like before, our leisure time is confined to functional dinner dates and movies. But this small domain of activities is not limited by our withered imaginations. On the contrary: we just can’t conceive of doing anything else. We are exhausted and overworked. Plus, the population of available socialites is slim. Every bar and dessert parlour is virtually empty. The restaurants, although busy, suggest docile functionality.
No one is in love. No one is holding hands. No one is going out on dates. The library would be the meeting place of choice, but people are too busy to flirt. Come to think of it, nearly everyone at the party was single, including my friend’s very attractive and very available roommates. I suppose the reason is this: their academic drive is incapacitating. It is because of their dedication to research that they prioritize late nights at a lab over meeting potential mates.
The consolation for leading these lackluster love lives is that most of these students will be leading professional academics in a few short years. They will publish articles, get good academic jobs, and make important scientific discoveries. But this compromise position is hard to swallow.
In one sense, the people I met this trip are truly remarkable. They are the academic elite. Even the non-academically-inclined have large-scale plans based in politics, business or the fine arts. Superficially, they work harder than I thought was possible, and they like it. They have been conditioned to expect the best work possible from themselves and their peers. And they do not tolerate mediocrity. This is what separates them from us. Our academic culture tolerates lame scholarship; we think it impolite to do otherwise. If anything, this trip certainly gave me good reason to dispel the myth that “U of T is so hard”.
However, in another, more important sense, these kids are entirely like us. Their scholastic drive usually conceals this, but ordinary post-teenage emotions sometimes creep out. This angst peaked at the party, where their paradox was made prodigiously manifest: at risk of undermining their academic prosperity, 100 of the most intelligent, charming, and sex-starved individuals in the United States could not hook up.
I guess it goes without saying that I left New Haven alone.
Emilio Reyes Le Blanc is currently pursuing his undergraduate degree in philosophy, and is co-editor of U of T’s undergraduate philosophical journal, Noesis.
