Stephen Preston: Aged idealism, kept or lost?

It's that time of the semester, when exam pressures build up and the editorial page of The Daily Pennsylvanian starts to look rather eccentric. And though my own role with exams involves being a source of pressure rather than a victim of it, I'm still feeling it. So here's my contribution.

People have commented that it's a bit strange to see a math professor writing in the student newspaper. As others have gotten used to the idea, it's started to seem a bit strange to me. And since I've started running out of column ideas -- George W. Bush might stretch a war in Iraq through his entire career, but I can't -- I decided I'd finally discuss something the other columnists can't.

Today, I am old. I thought it would happen more gradually, and figured I had a few more years to be "young and irresponsible" (13 years, if our White House occupant be used as a role model). No such luck.

You will reach this day eventually, and so you might as well learn what it's like so you're prepared. Too many people get old without preparing, and suddenly find themselves doing things like getting married, discovering religion or even registering Republican. Next thing they know, they're driving an SUV through rush hour traffic and all they remember of "principles" are those annoying people from The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

So how do you keep your student idealism once you're gainfully employed and financially comfortable? Well, I'm still working on that, but here are a few suggestions I've come up with so far.

First, don't spend it all. I asked a friend making minimum wage what she would do with a million dollars, and to my surprise she had already spent so much of it in her mind that there was nothing left over for charity. While there are plenty of things you could do with lots of money, there are also plenty of things you could do with less. Plan to give some of it away, and not for tax purposes, either.

Second, don't confuse work and life. Even if you get the most politically correct job imaginable -- say, cleaning oil off baby seals with dollar bills confiscated from Exxon -- you can't stop doing activities on the side. Getting paid to do something corrupts it, and you need something to volunteer in to keep you pure. As a corollary, you need to have friends outside work who share and reinforce your ideals.

Third, remember where you came from. You have to remember that your success is at least partly luck, or you become very arrogant and selfish. It's common to hear people say, "I made it because I work hard; therefore anyone who works hard can make it; therefore people who aren't successful aren't working hard." Be careful not to be so proud of yourself that you can't admit when you got a break; we all did at some point in our lives.

If you came from a wealthy family and you've always had things go your way, it's probably better to forget where you came from and try to imagine coming from somewhere else.

Fourth, don't abuse your power. Since you're a university graduate, you'll probably end up with somebody below you. If you can't treat people well when you have power over them, you can hardly demand that presidents and corporate executives treat their subordinates any better.

Honestly, I haven't quite figured this out myself. Fortunately, there are a good number of "old" people here who seem to understand how to be idealistic better than I do. Some of them started a group called Penn Faculty and Staff Against War in Iraq.

Penn-FSAWI is holding a teach-in at Huntsman Hall at 4:30 this afternoon on the Iraq war. They'd like you to come and show support and perhaps learn something from Penn's experts about the situation. You might check out the Web site at http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/fsawi, as well.

As for me, I will be leaving this spot for a more deserving student columnist. My last political column will appear in two weeks, and in it I will write mathematics.

Please close the newspaper now. It's time for a quiz. Hope you were paying attention.

Stephen Preston is a lecturer in Mathematics.

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