When’s the last time you heard a Penn student say, “Because I wanted to?”
Choosing to stay in is always followed by “Because I have an economics quiz tomorrow.” Eating unhealthily signifies having a “cheat day” or being sick. Joining a club has to be for networking or career advancement. Enjoyment for its own sake has disappeared in our community.
Penn, it seems, has lost the art of living life for pleasure: Doing things only because they feel good, and that being enough. Italians call it dolce far niente — literally, the sweetness of doing nothing. The Greeks had a goddess dedicated to it, Hedone, who embodied pleasure as its own reason.
In a recent conversation with a friend, I confessed that I missed the quiet and peace of home. The people in my hometown live for simple pleasures: sunsets on porches, good music, and love. And those are their gems of life; that’s all they need. It was enough for me too.
He replied by saying that the noise of Penn — the chaos of always having to be “on” — is an extreme of how the real world works. After graduation, he said, he’d strike the balance between enjoyment and “real-world responsibilities.”
Wise, I thought. And a big relief. Until it wasn’t — why must we leave Penn before we’re able to truly enjoy life? What happened to happiness right now?
At home I know the feeling of delight well. This summer, I spent time in my hometown shedding Penn’s religion of productivity that I’d formed over my first year and living without every choice needing to serve a purpose. I read a lot — not necessarily books that would make me smarter, just happier. I would wake up sometimes early, sometimes late. Spend days with friends or days in solitude. Eat and do whatever it was that my heart desired. By Penn’s standards, it was a massive waste of time.
Penn’s students’ gems of life include fewer porches and more Fortune 500 jobs. On campus, it feels as if pleasure needs to be justified as career-building, health-conscious, or, at the least, productive. Students feel the need to justify all of their choices with a “valid reason.” If they spend a day lounging and watching low-quality television, it’s always reframed to “I needed to recharge” and never “I wanted to.”
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My time in London this summer was an even sharper contrast to the demands of Penn’s social climate. The enjoyment of life felt greater. I saw people taking leisurely and aimless walks (without tracking steps) through parks. I witnessed nights that spilled out loudly and unhealthily through rampant drinking and smoking culture. It seemed like residents of the United Kingdom didn’t have to feel ashamed for living this way; it was the very purpose of their lives to do things that made them happy.
And of course, Americans also care too incessantly about living a happy life, which is precisely the problem. Americans are, as Ruth Whippman writes: “Obsessed with happiness.” Life enjoyment “has become the overachiever’s ultimate trophy.” We know the United States has a culture of productivity, long work hours, and relentless self-improvement. But, it appears even time outside of work has become somewhat optimized. Our language betrays us. Rest becomes “recovery” for the next day of work. Walking becomes “getting steps in.” Cooking becomes “meal prep.” Leisure is “grounding” another step toward these lofty goals to be “healthy, successful, and happy.”
Penn takes this ideology and magnifies it. The preprofessional culture we perpetuate on our campus alters every activity to be a means to an end. Join clubs to get an internship. Go out to network and build connections. What is simply fun in other spaces is now for an ulterior professional motive. I’m not saying this doesn’t make our students wildly successful — it does. But, at what cost? Seeing everything as a step toward professional success deprives us of the sweetness of living.
Naturally, we shouldn’t abandon the responsibilities of life or glorify laziness and poor health. However, Penn needs a culture that’s kinder to its students and celebratory toward more than career success. College is formative, and it should shape us into people that work well. But also live well. Even when students have job success and deeply lined pockets, they should understand how to live a fulfilling life. That’s not a skill that only appears after a steady income. Fighting the pressures of constant productivity is difficult, especially for Penn’s overachieving students.
Students need to learn how to stay in without studying for an exam or how to join a club simply because they enjoy it. When they become adults, they must know how to turn off their email and take a vacation. Maybe even skip a day of work, just because. Some pleasures are futile, and may be imperfect for health goals or career plans, but they’re still a part of living. Life isn’t something to balance with work. It is literally the entire point.
If we want students to enjoy their time at Penn and truly treat it as a bridge into the rest of their lives, we must instill in them a greater value in pure delight. Believing every action must be justified will leave us with rich resumes but lives empty of inner joy. Pleasure isn’t an indulgence; it is an essential part of life. Penn culturally and structurally must make room for it for the sake of its future adults.
PIPER SLINKA-PETKA is a College sophomore from West Virginia studying health and societies. Her email address is pipersp@sas.upenn.edu.
