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May 19, 2007

Princeton tie

Filed under: Freestyle — Fei @ 11:26 pm

I’ve been away from Princeton for almost two years… don’t know why, I still cannot leave Princeton behind me… in other words.. I still cannot fully adjust to the new environment. Princeton is so special. Some people say Princeton is oasis, Shangri-la. Some people say Princeton is very un-America. I totally agree with them. It is an ivory tower, secluded from the secular world. In my eyes, no other place can be as good as Princeton.

It’s graduation time again. I have been wondering whether to go back to Princeton again for a long time… On the one hand, lots of my friends will graduate and leave Princeton this year. I don’t know when and where I will meet them ever again in the future… on the other hand, I don’t know how to come back to reality if I ever go back…

About a month ago.. I leant towards not going back… decided to put Princeton down.. The way I did this, as usual, was to go to the other extreme. I told my friends that I would not go back. I would cut my tie with Princeton and be myself… I would Yi4 Dao1 Liang3 Duan4 with Princeton.. Maybe it would be a long time before I go back again… well, so far so good… until…

Last Wednesday… I suddenly heard a sad news… some kind of family emergency… It happened so suddenly and everything was so unexpected. Without hesitation, I immediately booked the plane ticket, packed luggage the next day and at Friday night, I was on the plane back to Princeton… Maybe I meant to go back one more time…

Well, I told myself… it was a perfect closure… I could meet all my friends one more time… and I could drop Princeton once and for all…. nobody or nothing could hold me back this time… well, that’s just my thought… Immediately after I got off dinky station, I liked Princeton. It was soooo familiar. The leaves were sooo green, the light green I could not find in west coast… I got to see all those lovely, beautiful buildings one more time… looking at them… thinking about all the things happened in the past five years… I love Princeton…

I hesitated… I didn’t know whether I should cut the tie… or how to do it… Maybe it’s not time for me to make the decision… maybe I could be more cruel when I’m far far away… As I was hesitating… on my last day at Princeton… my friends brought me a gift, unexpectedly… it was a Princeton tie, a tie with Princeton shield… and a Princeton card… I opened it.. and it said… "Since you have always told us that you wish to break the tie with Princeton, we have decided to get you a tie from Princeton…"… OMG… I did not know what to say… it was sooo special… I wanted to break the tie not because of any bad image from Princeton or something… but because I loved Princeton sooo much… having a Princeton tie at hand, how can I break it?… immediately… I told my friends… no, I would never break the tie…

I won’t break the tie… I will hang it in my closet, with most extensive care… wear it once a while… and be a Princetonian forever… Thank you.. my friends… the tie will never be broken…

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