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Exclusives: Tooke's
Take March
27, 2002: By Wes Tooke '98 Writing a column is like any other job in life; sometimes you wake up, look at your deadline, and realize that you have nothing. Nothing. No sophomore has recently disgraced himself and his college, President Tilghman has been quietly and competently doing her job, and you just can't bring yourself to write another diatribe on the eating clubs or the basketball team or homicidal bunk beds. At that moments you sigh sadly and prepare to write one of those hack columns you swore would never appear under your byline. Here's mine: A compilation of best and worst moments from my time at Princeton. Best beer: I had been on campus for all of six hours my freshman year when a generous upperclassman handed me a cool Rolling Rock. As I sipped it, the clouds opened, a trumpet sounded, and a deep baritone voice said, "Son, welcome to college." Life would never be the same. Worst beer: My junior fall I was in the basement of Cloister at an intemperate hour of the morning when the club ran out of beer. One of the officers found an old half-full keg in the back that was both warm and skunked, but he tapped it anyway on the theory that we would drink anything. He was right. The beer was wrong. Best basketball game: UCLA, 1997. Games like this aren't the only reason to come to Princeton over Harvard or Yale. But they sure don't hurt. Worst basketball game: University of California, 1997. Sure, every loss to Penn is like drinking a glass of boiling bleach. But this game, which immediately followed the victory over UCLA, was more than a rude awakening — it represented a return to the status quo in college basketball where raw athleticism trumps intelligent team play nine times out of 10. I'd have to watch the game tape to be certain, but I think Tony Gonzales dunked the ball about 15 times in the first half alone. Best comment on an academic assignment: "I'm not certain that you are destined to have a long career in economics." Worst comment on an academic assignment: "This is exactly the kind of work we look for in the psychology department." Best invention during my college years: The Internet. Not only could I get more information on the Red Sox than one man could possibly want, not only could my friends forward me jokes and obscene stories, but it was also suddenly possible to research an entire term paper without ever leaving your room. Now that's technology. Worst invention during my college years: The Internet. Not only could I get more information on the Red Sox than one man could possibly want, not only could my friends forward me jokes and obscene stories, but it was also suddenly possible to research an entire term paper without ever leaving your room. And, worse yet, the Internet bubble, which was fully inflated when we graduated, artificially inflated the expectations of my classmates to the point where they cannot possibly be expected to be happy with a mere $150,000 dollars per year. That's all. Please join me in praying that someone will do something egregiously stupid within the town limits of Princeton in the next two weeks. Otherwise, I'm going to have to write about the endowment in my next column. And nobody wants that.
You can reach Wes at cwtooke@princeton.edu
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