Sitting silently at the back of our classrooms are the community auditors of Princeton. Always the first to arrive and the last to leave, they are often retirees excited to begin a new chapter of their lives. I frequently hear about my grandma’s (suboptimal) experience auditing in New York, so I was curious about their experience with us at Princeton.
The Wednesday before midterms, I stayed after my Classical Mythology lecture to talk to them. There are around eight auditors in the class; five of them fill the last row in the back left of the classroom, and the rest are spread out. There are slightly more women than men, and they all seem to be of various ages. Of the group, one woman, Sue, noticed me. She wore her white hair like a fashion statement and had a permanent smile on her face. She was shocked that an undergraduate was purposefully seeking any of them out. I told her I was trying to find someone to interview for a profile. She was enthusiastic about the idea but insisted, “Are you sure you can’t interview all of us?” Pointing and naming every person beside her, she informed me that they were all “far too interesting to just pick one.” So, I didn’t.
I returned after the next lecture to actually do the interview. Marjorie Atwood, Sue Seferian, and Sun Fang Qiu were the three women with the afternoon free. Marjorie dressed fashionably, but in an understated way, and she carried herself in the same manner. Fang Qiu was dressed casually but conservatively, donning thick-rimmed glasses that indicated prolonged hours of looking at a computer or other study materials.
As we headed from McCosh to the couches on the second floor of Frist, they giggled over inside jokes. At one point, chuckling, Sue asked, “We’re not going to get thrown out of class, right?” Missing the context, I hesitated. She continued, “Yeah, you just look back, and we’re laughing at the phalluses.” Fang Qiu leapt in, saying, “No, that’s just you.” Then, Marjorie added, “She’s like, don’t blanket all of us,” ending in a round of laughter. They spoke to each other easily, as if they were old friends.
Marjorie, 64, has spent her life immersed in the art world. She started out doing editorial marketing for galleries and public relations firms across the United States before she became a successful interior decorative painter/art tutor/art non-profit leader. Recently, she has turned to fine art. Marjorie described the life of an artist as one “based in whatever area of a city that is neglected.” Her last studio, which she says she still misses, was in a neighborhood where what she thought was the local bookstore was, in fact, a pornography shop. Her career path has been pretty consistent, other than a few “detours here and there.” She also added, as if compelled, “I was engaged briefly to the manager of AC/DC.” All three of our jaws dropped. Sue suggested, “That must have been a highway to hell.”
Sue, 64, originally began her career as a musician. But, after meeting her bagpipe player/publisher husband, they decided that “one of [them] had to make money.” So she went to law school. She oversaw compliance for the Research and Development division of Johnson & Johnson, which involved travelling around the world to set the ethical standards of their labs. A part of this role was communicating to workers in places where “nothing happens without a bribe” that they couldn’t do that while working for J&J. She often recited how a college friend from India whose German neighbour refused to pay the bribe necessary to “turn the lights on.” She was “living without lights in her house for six years. That’s stubborn!” Marjorie remarked.
Fang Qiu, 53 (a “whippersnapper” according to Marjorie), was a quantitative analyst who immigrated from China for graduate school. Once, she and her husband told her kids, “Hey, your mom came to this country with nothing, and then we were able to make millions. So, you should be able to make billions!…What excuse do you have?” She surprised the other ladies, as this directly followed their conversation about their mutual opposition to tiger parenting. They laughed in disbelief as Sue said, “No pressure! No pressure!”
It was striking how well they knew the details of each others’ lives, even though they had told me their desire to use the interview to learn about each other. Fang Qiu was born towards the end of the cultural revolution in the year following President Nixon’s first meeting with Chairman Mao. Arts and culture were repressed, and the focus of education was to “help you become a tool to the machine.” She described her major at Beijing University (International Economics) as based on “functional utility.” “Of course,” she conceded, “tuition was not as exorbitant as it is here.” Sue stepped in, “Did you actually have to pay for school? No, right, because you qualified through exams?” Fang Qiu agreed, adding that due to the US-China partnership, she received a full scholarship (given to top Chinese STEM students) to complete university in China and graduate PhD studies in America.
As it turns out, not every class is as social as Classical Mythology. Fang Qiu mentioned that the classes she took last semester “were very isolating.” She hypothesized that this was because her co-auditors were “mainly men, old men” that end up sitting individually throughout the back of the large classroom. In contrast, Classical Mythology has a “very interesting group,” and benefits from a “much smaller” classroom.
I asked them if their group formed by chance or if one person had initiated it. Marjorie shook her head evasively. “Huh, I don’t know.” Sue asked me to repeat the question, having missed it. She raised a finger to point emphatically at Marjorie. “Yeah, Marjorie from the very first day told us she wanted to get a group together.” She added, “I was very excited because I’m too shy to do that” (not that anyone would call Sue shy) and because “everyone seemed really cool.”
Sue described Marjorie as having “aggressively pursued everyone to get their numbers and put them in a group chat.” Marjorie took playful offense, mumbling, “I don’t know about aggressively…” Sue eventually conceded to “assertively, but in a good way!”
Marjorie admitted that her motivation for doing the class was “absolutely” the social opportunities. She moved to Princeton two years ago and had felt quite isolated. So, after hearing about community auditing through “a woman in a dog park” (despite her husband being a professor at Princeton), she decided to do it as a way to meet new people. It is unclear if the group of auditors in Classical Mythology would have been friends without Marjorie’s instigation, but her presence ensured it happened.
The process of auditing is not open to everyone who wants it. Sue described the process as “pretty onerous,” with “a bit of gatekeeping.” There are two rounds of signups, the first reserved for those associated with Princeton (alumni, employees, spouses of professors, residents etc.) and the second for anyone who lives within 50 miles. Sue, who lives in Hopewell, was a part of the second round. She said by the time it got to her all of the classes were taken and she was placed on a wait list. “I literally got into the class the day before the class started,” she commented. She had intended to sign up with her friend who’s a painter (and who she “really wants” to introduce to Marjorie), but only Sue got in.
“It opens at 11,” Marjorie explained, but, “by 11:02, [all the classes] were full.” Fang Qiu turned to Sue and said, “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. You were very lucky.” Sue exclaimed, “I know I was very lucky!” Grabbing the other two women’s hands and playfully pouting, she said, “I’ll probably never see you guys again.”
Signing up to audit can be analogized to what Princeton students experience for course selection, but without the nimble fingers that they’ve gotten from using computers their entire lives. For her course selection, Fang Qiu opened every computer in the house and recruited the help of her daughter and husband, telling them “whoever has quick fingers, do it!” She bragged, “That’s how I’ve gotten into so many courses.”
The three auditors described sitting in class and learning as an immensely joyful pursuit. Sue said that they go to class just to “absorb whatever we can learn.” According to her, even those initially committed to doing all the readings give up after “three or four weeks into [the course].” They love the freedom in using lectures simply as a way to absorb content, especially without the need to complete all the homework or take rigorous notes. “I’m into the wash mode,” Marjorie agreed. “I sit there and let it wash over me.” Sue added “And something will seep in.” Sue told me that they often wish they knew when they were younger that one could actually just take a class “for the pleasure of learning.” (I did not have the heart to tell her that Princeton students also frequently adopt this philosophy in reading-heavy classes).
Classical Mythology supports their other ventures as empty nesters and retirees. Marjorie, whose art specializes in magical realism, hopes to gain inspiration for how to “anthropomorphize animals and creatures to help humans relate to them.” Sue, who is returning to her musical roots, aims to find songwriting material through the themes from class. She described the mythological concepts as “little fireworks in my head” that she hopes will “eventually” turn into something. Fang Qiu chose Classical Mythology because of her love of literature. Retired, she has decided to research and create a comparative study between Western and Eastern literature. This is her third class taken for this journey; last semester she took International Relations and Japanese Religion.
These ladies all voiced their attitude of feeling luck to even be able to stop working, so they have decided to revel in it. Fang Qiu described her mindset for the majority of her life as “goal-driven survival.” It was “graduate, find a job, get your immigration status, raise kids, and accumulate assets.” But now, with those goals finished, “You just realize, hey, there’s something called life.” Sue told us that when her financial planner informed her that she didn’t need to work anymore, she “just lost it and started crying.” She added, “I’ve worked since I was 11 years old.”
I asked them what having free time is like. Marjorie responded, “I’m still trying to figure it out. One of these days, I will grow up.” Still, they aren’t scared of getting old. “This is the golden age of us,” Fang Qiu said. “It’s really a privilege,” Sue explained. “My dad died when he was 60, so I’ll take the laugh lines.”
Studies have shown that this is the age when women are happiest. Sue said, “Having raised our children [and] finished that crazy work life, we are now in this phase of just enjoying life.” Fang Qiu added that what makes Classical Mythology so special involves “a bit of self-selection.” Its complete lack of functional utility attracts auditors who “are just trying to enjoy learning.” This euphoric feeling is infectious. My time spent with these three women was certainly worth the sacrifice of an afternoon, even during midterms week.
Stella Erro makes new friends out of her classmates.
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