I Could Be Really Happy Here

March 4, 2018
Peyton Lawrenz

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Fall leaves outside Frist
On every Orange Key tour, it is tradition that the last question each guide answers is “Why Princeton?”   
 
Why Princeton? 
 
I visited Princeton for the first time on Oct. 18, 2014 (there’s even an Instagram post to prove it). I was an incredibly indecisive college applicant. Over the course of my college application process, I visited twenty different campuses of all different sizes and all across the country. I didn’t know what I wanted: I was interested in Biology and then Comparative Literature, and then English, and then pre-med. I was interested in going to a “big” school, though anything would’ve been “big” compared to my high school with a graduating class of 60 students. I was interested in everything, and emerging from high school, you should be! 
 
Princeton was the last campus I visited. When we arrived at the anxious hour of 9:00 a.m., my parents parked in a parking lot I now know they weren’t supposed to, and we approached campus from behind Firestone Library.

As a first-time visitor to campus, I was immediately struck with immense reverence for my impression of the beauty and immensity of the school and its campus. Shrouded in beautiful, rich orange and red foliage, I knew immediately that I could be really happy here. It was nothing more than a feeling or a nagging intuition; but it was right, and I was right.