I am definitely not among the most tactical and effective Princeton students when it comes to getting the university to pay for my globetrotting. I know people who seem to travel everywhere through class trips, fellowship programs, independent research funding, international programs, and other opportunities. I am happy, though, with the couple of places I’ve been on the university’s dime.
I spent the summer of 2024 working in Kenya through an IIP, and I spent this past summer working as a legal intern for the International Rescue Committee in Spokane, Washington. To cover my expenses this summer, I received funding from SSII.
In Spokane, I was set up, through a mutual connection, to sublet a room in the Gonzaga University Cross Country team house, a huge 14-bedroom building that was a frat house before the cross country team took it over. Through a shared passion for running, I quickly made friends with my housemates. They welcomed me and served as my Spokane tour guides, taking me to nearby lakes, downtown bars, and remote dirt roads for morning runs. One Saturday morning, the guys invited me on one of their runs, a route they call Freeman. They told me it would be a good spot for the recovery run I had planned that morning. So, I hopped into one of their cars, a 1994 Dodge Dakota pickup, navy blue with a rumbling engine. We turned on a classic rock radio station, which that morning was playing ACDC’s greatest hits.
The Freeman route is named after the single-street town from which it starts, almost an hour south of Spokane. Starting on Freeman’s main (and only) street, the route is a perfect 10-mile rectangle on the dirt farm roads outside of town.
Freeman’s wheatfields are treacherously hilly—I didn’t know wheat grew at such steep pitches—and the Gonzaga tradition is to rip Freeman, to run the hills with aggression and have Saturdays be their week’s hardest day of training. I had run a tough session the day before and was planning for an easy recovery day. What I envisioned as a chill, scenic countryside run turned into a death march.
We set off from Freeman’s main street, and our first mile was under 6 minutes, faster than usual for an easy run. I protested our pace, and they told me to brace myself. Their plan was to ratchet the pace faster. On tired legs, I barely made it to mile 5 before they dropped me. So, I was on my own, outside of Freeman. Fortunately, there was no way I could get lost because every time I crested one of the hills, the main street of Freeman would again appear in the distance. The sun quickly turned unforgiving. A few pickup trucks passed me by, and I literally ate dust. When the trucks got out of earshot, I was left only with the sound of swaying wheat.
I made it back to town, eventually, and told the guys that Freeman may have been the hardest run of my life. They seemed very happy that their weekly ritual had such an ability to destroy me. After the run, we walked over to the gas station store, with a big sign over the entrance reading “Freeman Store, established 1900,” and drank sodas at the picnic table on the store’s porch.
Many of the best memories I have from Princeton, and from the places I’ve been lucky enough to visit through Princeton, like Spokane, aren’t from the grand moments I’d expect, like winning an Ivy League cross country title or celebrating with friends after finals are done. Instead, many of my favorite Princeton memories are from random places like Freeman, where the Gonzaga cross country team totally humbled me. Gasping for breath, unable to get ACDC’s “Hell’s Bells” out of my head—a fitting song for when you feel like you’re dying—I arrive at a top of a hill in the middle of nowhere, and I see that a bigger one awaits.