On the Thesis, and Later Lessons

I skated through Princeton. The ice was always thin, and it wasn’t until the senior thesis that it broke and I tumbled through. My grade — a six — meant I would not graduate with the rest of my class. Failure writ large. Princeton was kind to me and in the following year gave me another chance. The next year I got the degree: box checked and off to a life in business and publishing.

I was an ordinary undergraduate for those days — entitled white boy from the suburbs. I wasn’t an ordinary alumnus. I didn’t buy the blazer, go to football games, come to Reunions. If I thought about Princeton in those years after graduation it was a “been there, done that” sort of thing. And probably a little “how could they do this to me?”

In the middle of life, I became involved with Princeton again. My work in publishing brought me to the University Press, where I served on the board for 20 years. This experience put me in touch with a Princeton that was new for me a place of intellectual excitement and curiosity.

It wasn’t new of course. That Princeton had existed all along and I was simply late to recognize it. One of my most vivid memories of Princeton was Professor James Ward Smith’s final Philosophy 101 lecture. As he wound it down, Smith turned his back to the lecture hall. He was quiet for a moment. Then, suddenly he turned and delivered his final thought, “Be amazed!” he cried and stalked out of the room. 

That spark never died; it is a debt I owe to Princeton. Now, in my 80s, I have come to realize another debt to Princeton. It has to do with the uses of failure. Samuel Beckett put it best I think: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail better.” The undergraduates I have encountered at Reunions and elsewhere fill me with admiration. I would never get into today’s Princeton and that’s fine. But I — as I suppose it is with all us old alums — would love to have another go.