/lit/ - Literature

How do I tell good art from bad? What I like is always different from critics.

Books about aesthetics?

>Be mediocre high school student who had to read The Great Gatsby and subsequently becomes obsessed with F. Scott Fitzgerald's biography and work.
>For some reason the more I learned about him the more I felt like I was rediscovering a lost self.
>Contract the obsession F. Scott had for Princeton and apply only there during my College apps Senior year of high school. Despite only having a 3.0 GPA and 1600/2400 SAT score.
>Get rejected. Feel devastated at first, but then remember that F. Scott also got rejected. I felt even more like my idol and dedicated myself to getting a better SAT and trying again next year.
>Keep getting rejected and am practically NEET for the next 5 years of my life.
>At age 23 finally get the long awaited acceptance letter and that fall semester begin my Freshmen year.

I am now 24 and have finished my first year at Princeton. Or more like barely avoided academic dismissal with my barebones “passing” GPA (and this is after grade inflation was accounted for).

This school is a complete meme. I thought I would meet people who genuinely dedicated themselves to pursuits of literature. Instead I had a roommate whose father bought him into the school (Dude, I'm a 4th generation legacy bro, lmao!), and a bunch of classmates who cared more about parties and social posturing than the material they were studying.

Failing to make friends with the people I thought I would meet, I gradually withdrew into a hermit lifestyle of drinking in my dorm room alone while reading (my roommate was usually at one of his GF's dorms and hardly came back). And procrastinating my assignments.

I wrote several works as well trying to capture the reality of being an internet addicted incel social outcast, but when I took my story to the writing center the girl who read it looked at me with a repressed grimace as she tried to end the session as soon as possible. Decided to never show my writing there again.

Pink Beret girl (who was a qt in one of my classes who I eventually got on talking basis with) ended up using me to do her assignments. Eventually I had to cut things off when I found out she was lying about being single and actually regularly went to parties despite telling me she “wasn't a party girl”.

The remainder of the semester was spent reading books from my own interest and ignoring class assignments as they only reminded me of my disappointment for spending years to get to this school.

This is a school for rich Chads and Stacies, anyone else is just here as decoration. Honestly, I think this was even true back in F. Scott's time as well.

Maybe the next academic year will be better. At least then I'll be a sophomore.