America Online recently launched an Internet reality show that documents the lives of six college freshmen using footage the students film on and around campus. Titled Project: Freshman, the show promises to deliver "the truth" about what college is really like. Given its premise (students filming themselves), I initially held out hope it might deliver, at the very least, a "truth" not entirely manipulated by Real World-style editing.
Then I watched an episode.
Most of the six freshmen shed more light on their poor communication skills than they do on college (for example, Brenna's take on school: "Like omigosh, college next year. This is like the biggest part of my life ever. Like, you can't mess up.").
The show isn't all blabbing, though. Several of the freshmen get sick in their first week on campus and a few others learn the value of shower thongs.
But while those incidents accurately underline the logic of college life (if you don't wear thongs, you grow foot fungus), they don't reflect its greater truths (whatever those are). Before watching the show, I wanted to know what the deeper meaning of this $40,000-per-year camp is. I needed to find out what makes a mammoth collegiate institution tick. I desired at least one "truth."
So last Saturday night and Sunday morning, I created my own reality show, walking through campus with a digital audio recorder and notepad. I took notes on everything. Here's what I got.
Scene I: 7 p.m.-5 a.m.
Frat parties.
Scene II: 5:35 a.m.
Two girls enveloped in poncho-like shawls and clingy jeans tiptoe out of the Kappa Sigma house. The girls clutch each other, as if they're very cold or about to fall. One cannot stand without the other.
I approach and tell them of my reality show. "So we're going to be in your column?" one of the two asks me.
"Maybe," I answer.
"No way."
"Yes way."
"No way."
"Yes way."
"OK." The girls part from me, heading down 37th towards Spruce. They've way underestimated the realness of my reality show.
Scene III: 5:55 a.m.
Marvin, a chef at Le Petit Creperie, stands outside Houston Hall waiting for another chef to arrive and unlock the place.
"It's calm; you don't even see the squirrels out here," he says, through a plume of cigarette smoke. "But shit, man, I just left here last night at 9:30. I got about five hours of sleep."
Scene IV: 6:05 a.m.
A guy and girl stroll south on Locust, his arm wrapped around her waist. As they pass Van Pelt, the girl huddles close to the guy, leaning her head into the hood of his sweatshirt. Under the street lights, it's hard to tell where she ends and he begins: a cocooned creature of gray fleece. The sky above is black.
Scene V: 6:50 a.m.
The Sunday morning sun rises behind the skyscrapers downtown. The sky blazes red-orange. And in the rooftop lounge of Hamilton House, another guy and girl snuggle on a couch, overlooking the city. They gaze out, but their eyelids begin to droop. Saturday night was long. Arms entangled, they fall asleep.
The end.
What truth did I glean? Perhaps it was that beneath the surface of keggers and random hookups, college stirs with sweatshirt cocoons and sunrises. Perhaps it was that after 5 a.m., girls will keep each other standing, for whatever reason. Or maybe, it was that the people who keep this college churning are those who wake before the squirrels, just to serve us crepes.
Then again, in observing others' lives, I may have been overlooking a truth in front of me all along.
So said Jessica, a Bucks County native and University of Florida student who stars in "Project: Freshman" (she doesn't disclose her surname as a safety precaution). She is the only student on the show, as far as I can tell, who has a coherent thing or two to say about college.
"You spend all your time watching a reality show -- watching other people -- on a computer screen, and it will rot your brain," she said in a phone interview Saturday. You want truth? "Go outside and do something -- play in your backyard."
Sitting at my desk on the ninth floor of a concrete high-rise, with one hand on a cell phone and the other on a laptop, I replayed her saying "backyard" a few times in my head. It sounded foreign. But in some way, just right. Gabriel Oppenheim is a College freshman from Scarsdale, N.Y. Opp-Ed appears on Fridays.
