Finals had just ended, and I get a call.
“Want to go sledding?” my friend asks me.
Um. YES.
For those of you reading this from somewhere where the weather functions normally, I’ll just fill you in. It has been snowing like crazy in Princeton this year and has been really consistently cold. Fun fact—Lake Carnegie, which is right by campus, froze shortly after everyone left for intersession (winter break right after finals), and people who remained on campus were allowed to walk on it. I’m hoping that this happens again soon—it certainly hasn’t gotten any warmer out….
Anyway, I had just finished two hours of essay writing for a really great class about the politics of modern Islam (taught by Bernard Haykel, who is an excellent professor and super accomplished) and was finally free. So I went for the obvious next step—I bought tons of ice cream and headed for my dorm. When I got the call from my friend, I threw on a pair of extra sweatpants, grabbed my hat, gloves, and ice cream (which was still delicious even in the cold weather and conveniently didn’t melt) and ran over to the hill by Whitman College.
Whitman is one of the six residential colleges at Princeton. Residential colleges are dorm complexes within Princeton’s campus that comprise a sub-community and each have their own dining hall, library and office of student life. More on the res-college system here. I live in Butler, which is right across the street from Whitman.
Still high on the exhilaration of finishing the semester, I finally had a chance to appreciate a side of Princeton apart from the academia. Princeton is absolutely breathtaking in the winter, and for weeks Princetonians had been taking advantage of the weather. I enjoyed every second of it.
P.S. I may have even tried sledding while standing up.
P.P.S. I fell.