Until this year, Admit Weekends always unsettled me. Don’t get me wrong, I always wanted the ProFros (Prospective Frosh) to like their Admit Weekend as much as I had so that they would choose the best school in the country, but there was something that always got to me, just a little.

It wasn’t the dangerous obstacle course that biking through campus became or the super long lines in the dining halls; those were just minor inconveniences. What got to me was how “Gee, golly!” the ProFros were about Stanford. I’d come in just as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as a freshman, but over time, I found myself developing that slightly jaded attitude you get about a place that you’ve come to know too well, a jadedness that was always magnified during Admit Weekend.

I’m sure that this feeling isn’t entirely unfamiliar. After those initial few months of freshman year — when you hang out with anyone and everyone, when you run around between 16 different clubs because everything at the Activity Fair sounded so interesting, when you bike all the way to Ricker because you’ve heard stories about how good the food is — you settle down into a comfortable routine. You start hanging out mostly within your friend group, you pare down those 16 clubs into two or three, you keep eating at your dining hall despite how tired you are of the food there because it’s right there. That’s when you might start getting a little jaded, when everything that was once new and shiny becomes normal and boring, when you stop seeing all of the stuff you haven’t done and complain about the things you keep doing over and over.

So given that I’m an old, seen-it-all senior, I should have been especially jaded for Admit Weekend, right? But this past weekend, whenever I saw a ProFro, so happy to be here, I found myself feeling pangs of envy instead, nostalgic of my own Admit Weekend.

Their energy and enthusiasm made me feel a little bad about the relative lack of energy and enthusiasm I’ve had at times over the past four years, as if I’d not taken full advantage of my time here. At the same time, comparing the attitude of a ProFro who’s seeing Stanford for the first time to that of a student who could walk around campus blindfolded isn’t really fair, because regardless of where you are and how awesome that place is, there’s going to be some disillusionment over time.

But that doesn’t mean we have to add to our disillusionment by sticking to the same routine, day after day. Last week, I decided to try eating nothing but Nutraloaf — a bland, nutritionally complete meal loaf served in prisons as a disciplinary measure — for four days. The first two days were okay, but by the third and fourth days, it was getting extremely difficult to keep eating the Nutraloaf — it wasn’t so much that it tasted bad; the difficulty was more that there was no variety, both within the loaf itself (Nutraloaf has a mushy, homogenous texture and flavor) and between meals. I had to stop after four days, because I just didn’t think I could keep forcing down bites of mushy loaf — I was hungry, but I just didn’t have any interest in eating. But if I’d been able to use condiments to spice it up a little — a squirt of sriracha, a dip into barbecue sauce — the monotony of the loaf might’ve been made more palatable.

So just like how Nutraloaf might have been easier to eat with ketchup and mustard, adding a bit of variety to our routines might be enough to slow down the disillusionment that comes with being in one place for a long time. Things like walking to places instead of biking, taking an interesting-looking class just for kicks, going to a performance of a student group you’ve never seen before. Sometimes, it can feel like there’s not much to do on campus, but there’s almost always something going on. Whether it’ll actually be interesting, who knows? Best-case scenario, you stumble across something that turns out to be crazy awesome. Worst-case scenario, you spent an hour or two doing something that you never want to do again.

The worst-case scenario might sound pretty bad, considering how busy we already are, but if Nutraloaf taught me anything, it’s that those worst-case scenarios actually make everything else look so much better in comparison. Before my time on Nutraloaf, I’d been feeling a little tired of the food at my house, but now? Everything tastes amazing.

So if you’re stuck in a slump and you’re feeling sort of listless? Just think, “What Would a ProFro Do?” and try something new out. (But not Nutraloaf. There are much easier ways to make things taste good again.)

 

Tim wants to say to any FoShoFros out there that Stanford is amazing. If you want to know some of the secret treasures, hit him up at [email protected].