Our Tragic Flaw

The Bubble is a natural flaw in our university system that must be conquered at every turn. On Day Three of NSO, we freshly-minted bubbleheads, already disengaged from the natural flow of human existence by 72 hours of palm trees and dorm cheers, got our first “Bursting the Bubble” talk, as inevitable as “the Birds and the Bees” discussion in junior high. Trapped inside of our snow globe campus, we lose sight of the outside world. How can you play intramural dodgeball when Chinese citizens still face party censorship? How can you sip Orange Dream Machine when people still wake up in Guantanamo Bay? How can you speak of Kierkegaard when North Korea just tested nuclear weapons? We are not living real life here at Stanford; across the freeway, beyond the IKEA and the Best Buy, that’s real life. For over two years now, my freshman dorm has been waging email war over how to spend the $600 left in our dorm fund: One camp insists we throw a party with booze and bouncy castles, the other pushes for donations to charity. For shame, bouncy castles.

The Playground

The Bubble is the only world that should matter to us. Maybe someday you can feed the poor and solve the Middle East, but right now we’re still just kids. The problems will still be there in four years, and if you think The Review or The Roosevelt Institution are changing the world, you, Sir or Madame, need to get laid. You can still cure cancer when you’re 23, but by that age, you can no longer wake up in time for lunch, leave for class unshowered wearing your pajamas and flip-flops or flirt with the cute guy or girl in your IHUM section. Check Google News, watch “The Daily Show” or read “The Economist” if you must, but don’t bother me with your supposed outside world. I’ve got more important things on my mind.

Look, But Don’t Touch

The Bubble is so shiny. Go work out in our new gym. Watch football in our new stadium. Watch them build the new Old Union, the new Law School dorm and the new underground parking lot. Jamba Juice wasn’t here a few years ago. Neither was Subway. The bookstore just got a spit shine. So did the Treehouse. Don’t you like all those plasma screens? Doesn’t Hoover Tower look freakishly clean? It is the beautiful cycle of reconstruction. Your dorm will look very different in a few years. They recarpeted Larkin a few weeks after my class moved out. There is no sadness here, no nostalgia, because the important places in your life are only memories. It reminds me a bit of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles — sparkly as a 30th century utopia, hollow as a plaster cast.

Role-Playing Game

The Bubble is an open-ended gaming universe following the “Sandbox” model epitomized by “Grand Theft Auto.” Within the boundaries, you can do anything you want: run naked through the Quad, smoke weed on the Theta Chi rooftop, throw empty beer bottles off the balcony, sleep with ugly people with low self esteem and beautiful people with low self esteem. Sure, the cops get on your tail every now and then, but you can usually lose them, or, if need be, launch a rocket launcher. In “Vice City,” if you flew too far away from the island, the graphics got all woozy. It feels the same when you leave campus — palm trees and bike lanes give way to hills, a golf course, endless roads and endless traffic down Palm Drive. The world gets fuzzy, and then you’re back in reality.

La Montagna di Purgatorio

The world inside the Bubble is Purgatory, a necessary step in our steady climb toward a higher plane of existence, which could be grad school, med school or JP Morgan. The days are all the same here. Nothing ever really changes, but everything always moves forward. You see the same people and the same faces. Some people leave early, some people stay longer. Nothing we do here really matters. That will come later, when we enter the Paradise of Reality (which comes with a salary, a stipend or a welfare check). You’ll find, at graduation, that you’ve changed, but you won’t know how.

Within the Glass Bubble, Behind the Green Wall

The Bubble is a utopian outpost, a vision of the perfect future, a veritable City on the Hill whose light shines throughout the world and in the pages of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. We are the lucky chosen few, selected for specific genetic characteristics like intelligence, leadership capability, Olympic-level physique and SAT scores. Although we feel sad for our friends and loved ones who remain behind, we owe it to them to do everything we can for the advancement of the human race. We will expand our minds and perfect our bodies. Anything which is not useful — parties, kegs in shopping carts, skateboards, fun — must be cleansed, according to our Beloved Fundamental Standard. All is perfect within our Blessed Bubble. The streets are clean. Dying Palm Trees are replaced in the evening, out of sight of joggers. Our feces smell of peppermint.

Like A Drug

The Bubble is addictive. By the time you’re a senior, you know everybody, and the people you don’t know probably know everybody else. This closeness is addictive; it is similar to Manhattan, where you always run into everybody, especially when you don’t want to. Once you’ve lived in Manhattan, you can’t live in Omaha. And once you’ve lived at Stanford, the rest of the world can’t help but seem all wrong — too spacious, filled with people you don’t know and never will. This is why so many people stay here for as long as possible, why there are so many Stanford marriages, why so many alumni still give so much to the school even as they complain about everything from the football team to the “new” mascot (remember, they were Indians.) Call it the Bravman Complex.

Darren Franich thinks “Lost” is an allegory for the Stanford experience. Email him at dfranich@stanford.edu.