Over the summer and into the 2018-2019 school year, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students teamed up with the Undergraduate Student Government and our resident political organization, the Whig-Cliosophic Society to launch an exciting voter engagement campaign. Vote100 became the name of the initiative, referencing the goal to have 100% undergraduate student engagement in the 2018 midterm elections and all future elections for which students are available. The initiative encourages students to take an online pledge to engage in the voting process which is to increase the likelihood that students vote. With our informal motto of “…service of humanity,” there’s a calling for Princetonians to engage with our basic tool, voting, in the democratic process. In fact, the University hosts an on-campus polling location on election days.

The campaign also encourages international students and non-New Jersey natives to vote in their home country elections, encourage their eligible peers to vote, or vote in their home state via absentee ballot. To kick off the initiative, Vote100 hosted “Stand Up and Vote,” a comedy special on the first day of classes. Former host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, even showed up as a surprise for the students!

The campaign has been the embodiment of campus engagement. Every week of the semester so far, students from all walks of campus life and political ideologies have come together to help students pledge and register to vote in Frist Campus Center. Regardless of who people vote for, there is a community recognition of our obligation to give back as Princeton students and to become active participants of civil society.

“Time flies.” We’ve all heard it before, especially when you’re having fun. But regardless of how often you hear the phrase, you are rarely ever prepared for the moment when you realize half of your Princeton University career is gone.

I remember moving in to campus as a first-year student, fresh-faced and eager to experience all Princeton had to offer me. I joined way too many clubs, took classes in departments I had never heard of, went on University-sponsored trips and made some amazing friends. You could say I was having fun.

So it came as a surprise when I began to realize just how much time had flown by without me noticing. After two wonderful years, I am now jumping into the deep end of a pool full of junior papers, research seminars, challenging classes for my concentration and being on an independent meal plan, where I am reponsible for providing my own meals. With only two years remaining, I’ve decided I need to take advantage of every single opportunity that makes Princeton, in my opinion, "the best damn place of all." Here are a few of those opportunities for those of you who, like me, want to make the most of your time at college:

1. Go on trips sponsored by your residential college. I went apple picking with some friends in my first year, and it’s still one of my fondest memories.
2. See a Broadway show, also through a residential college. I grew up in New York, very close to Manhattan, so I saw a lot of Broadway shows growing up. It’s definitely something that I miss, and it makes me think of home.
3. Go to more dance shows. The student body at Princeton is full of incredible talent, and supporting friends is always a good idea.
4. Explore Nassau Street. Princeton is situated in a cute small town that reminds me a lot of where I grew up. Exploring the area and discovering the local businesses is a fun adventure to experience with friends!
5. Go to more lectures/conferences. Last year, I went to my first lecture and heard Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Sonia Sotomayor talk about her life, including her time at Princeton. It was amazing to see such a successful woman and alum. It got me even more excited for the future.
6. Attend more athletic events.  The athletics department is extensive and talented, and it is an intrinsic part of most people’s college experience. And, of course, I love supporting my school!
7. Go to office hours more often. One of Princeton's strongest qualities is its wealth of amazing professors. Not only are office hours beneficial because you can learn something, but they are also an opportunity to get to know your professors, and making connections is always worthwhile!

This is a short list, and it definitely does not include everything I want to do here, but it’s a great place to start!

One of the characteristics of the Bridge Year Program that surprises many people is that there isn't any formal academic coursework (besides language training). It is a year away from learning in the classroom and instead is focused on its core value of experiential service learning. This is a really valuable thing to do, but some people have asked me if this year away from academics makes it hard to return to school in the fall as a first-year student.

My experience in Brazil, a former Bridge Year location, was just the opposite. Far from making it harder to adapt back to academic study, I was excited to get back into the classroom! The senior year grind of college applications had left me a little cynical about my studies, but a gap year totally dissipated that feeling. A year away from homework and tests, was spent focusing on the real world. It gave me context and meaning to the work I am doing at Princeton. On top of that, with less time and high school curricula restrictions, I was free to read about and research topics during my Bridge Year that I was naturally drawn towards — which gave a lot of clarity to my thought about course selection when I finally arrived on campus.

Bridge Year is definitely not a vacation — we worked hard and learned a lot. But we were learning about the world and about ourselves. These lessons proved to be incredibly helpful when I arrived on campus. Far from making it hard to return to the classroom, my gap year experience greatly improved the quality of my academic work and life in my first year at Princeton.

Whenever I walk into the Princeton University Chapel, I feel small.

That’s the point, I think. I’ve long thought that all these ancient, massive cathedrals are designed that way to make you aware of how small you are in the face of the eternal, of the divine. And the Chapel is more akin to a cathedral than whatever comes to mind when you think “chapel” — it’s the third-largest university chapel in the world, with an architectural style to match. So whenever I walk in, I am struck by how grand it is, and I feel small. In a good way.

The Chapel is one of my favorite places on campus. I spend every Sunday morning there, singing in the weekly non-denominational worship service as part of the Chapel Choir. In the first week of my first year, I and all the other first-years attended the Opening Exercises for the Class of 2021, right there in the Chapel. I loved the ceremony of it, the grandeur, everything from the kites in the procession to the stately robes worn by the faculty to the hymns the Chapel Choir sang. That was when I decided I wanted to spend more time in the Chapel, and audition for the Chapel Choir.

The Chapel is home to a number of other important events in the University calendar, among them the Baccalaureate Service at graduation and the Service of Remembrance to commemorate alumni who have passed in the last year. But for me my favorite moments in the Chapel are those Sunday mornings spent in song and quiet reflection, the morning light streaming through the magnificent stained glass windows.

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As a lifelong fan of sports in general, and NCAA football and basketball in particular, one (albeit minor) concern I had coming to Princeton was that there wouldn't be many other students who shared my interest. While it is certainly the case that Princeton’s home football and basketball games, for instance, typically don't bring students out in masses to attend, I think my concern was for the most part misplaced. 

For one, Princeton has 37 varsity men's and women's sports teams, all of which compete at a high level, without neglecting the "student" portion of student-athlete. In my first two years, a number of Princeton teams have brought home Ivy League Championships*, including football, which shared the title with UPenn in 2016, and men's and women's basketball, who won Ivy League Championships in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Men's basketball near upset of Notre Dame in the first round of the 2017 NCAA Tournament got the attention of even the most normally disinterested students..

Also, there are a plethora of organizations on campus for those interested in either participating or covering sports. In addition to the varsity athletics programs, Princeton offers another 38 club sports teams, and a variety of intramural sports offerings in each part of the year. There are usually some quality pick-up basketball games running on the Dillon Gym courts as well. For those more interested in analyzing sports than playing them, there's the Princeton Sports Analytics club, as well as the Daily Princetonian sports section, where I've worked for two years (and we're always looking for new writers!).

So while nobody is going to mistake Princeton stadium for "The Big House" (University of Michigan football stadium's nickname) or Jadwin Gym for Cameron Indoor Stadium (Duke University's basketball stadium), I hope I've shown it's still good to be a sports fan at Princeton. 

*Editor’s Note: Our football team finished up the 2018-19 season with a perfect 10-0 record, resulting in an Ivy League championship. To continue the celebration Princeton partakes in a long time tradition of a bonfire. This bonfire only takes place if our football team beats both Harvard and Yale in the same season. It truly brings out a strong showing of students. Check out the highlights here.

Working as a tour guide, I’ve had the opportunity to spend much of this summer living on campus at Princeton University. This has been, generally speaking, an enjoyable experience, but there are some important ways in which life at Princeton during the school year differs from life at Princeton over the summer. Most noticeably, the campus is fairly devoid of Princeton students themselves, with the exception of those conducting research or working a campus job. Princeton does not offer any summer classes, so most students take the opportunity to spend the summer pursuing internships and other programs across the globe. However, many visitors travel to campus to attend our information sessions and tours.

Summers at Princeton have allowed me to develop a renewed appreciation for the campus. Without classes, work or extracurricular activities to manage, I’ve been able to dedicate additional time to enjoying the peaceful beauty of Princeton’s lovely buildings and outdoor spaces. A weekend trip to, in my opinion, the unpleasantly loud and bustling New York City helped remind me how much I value living and studying in a place as quiet and serene as Princeton, while not being completely in the middle of nowhere. Exercising at Dillon Gym has also been a nice change of pace.

Not everything is so rosy, however. Having grown up in Florida, I assumed that summer temperatures up North would be easily manageable. I was punished for my hubris, quickly discovering that the New Jersey summer gave Florida a run for its money with its heat and humidity. One heat wave in early July produced “feels-like” temperatures well above 100 degrees and sent me fleeing from my non-air-conditioned room in search of a building with air-conditioning. Summer is also, understandably, the time in which much construction and renovation takes place, with iconic Princeton structures such as Blair Arch and Nassau Hall, among others, undergoing significant construction. Hopefully, this will show visitors that Princeton works hard to keep its buildings from falling into disrepair. Finally, the inability to eat all my meals in a dining hall during the summer has made procuring food more difficult. But Wawa, a convenience store with food options on campus, fortunately offers a summer sale on hoagies that has produced some savings, given the probably-unhealthy number of said hoagies I have consumed.

Soon, however, the Wawa hoagie sale will come to an end and Princeton students will reconvene on campus from all over the world. While spending the summer on campus has been a generally positive experience, I still eagerly await the fall. As much as I love the campus itself, the community of students is what really makes Princeton a special place.

One of the most common questions I get asked is, "What made you choose Princeton?" and the answer isn't as simple for me as it is for some.

The Main Event of the 49^th Annual World Series of Poker concluded in Las Vegas, with the nine remaining players from a field of 7,874 vying for a championship bracelet and a first-place prize of 8.8 million dollars. 2,500 miles away, a somewhat smaller and less lucrative poker tournament series took place in the Friend Center Convocation Room at Princeton during the 2017-2018 school year – the Princeton Series of Poker.

Like the World Series of Poker, the PSOP attracts a mix of serious and recreational players to compete in the great game of No Limit Texas Hold’Em. Over the course of the year, the PSOP hosts seven or eight tournaments, which each attract somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 - 75 Princeton students looking to win prizes and earn points to climb the official PSOP leaderboard.

In many ways, the PSOP epitomizes the ways in which Princeton benefits its students. For one, the generosity of the University allows it to subsidize tournaments, providing dinner and giving students the opportunity to win prizes without having to pay an entry fee. (In a somewhat amusing twist, poker has been classified as a wholesome enough activity to receive money from the Alcohol Initiative Committee, which funds “late night social alternatives.”) Also, the tournaments receive attention from companies, particularly quantitative trading firms, interested in recruiting Princeton students. A number of such companies have sponsored tournaments and dispatched employees to deal tables and interact with students. One company even sent Jerrod Ankenman, the author of the well-known book The Mathematics of Poker, as a representative.

The most enjoyable aspect of the tournaments, however, is the ability to play with other Princeton students. The atmosphere is always friendly and energetic, as poker enthusiasts and newbies alike casually chat about hands, relishing the opportunity to apply their capable analytic abilities to an activity other than problem sets or papers. To me, these tournaments serve as good evidence for prospective students unconvinced that Princeton students do anything besides study – they show that a consistent group of students are willing to put their work aside to eat pizza and play a game, at least for a few hours.

“Where have you found your community this year?”

Princeton's student housing organization sent out a survey posing this question. I answered in the typical fashion: activities, my co-op, my classes, the friends in my major, etc. Oh, and the bathroom.

For the first two years at Princeton, I enjoyed a private bathroom with my roommate. We reveled in our privacy and often boasted about our private bathroom status. We didn’t want to even think about fighting over showers or wearing shower sandals. At the end of sophomore year, I was accepted into the Edwards Collective, a residential community on campus for those interested in the arts and humanities. I was ecstatic and was only concerned about one thing: a public bathroom. To my surprise, shower sandals aren’t so bad. And I only rarely had to wait to hop in the shower. The horror stories my other friends told didn’t match my experience at all. In fact, some of the best parts of my day were spent there.

The secret? My hallmates were chatty in the bathroom. As we brushed our teeth or washed our faces, we’d swap stories about our days. I looked forward to hearing more about the progression of someone’s senior thesis or seeing new videos of a dance routine. With a few of my hallmates, it was a time to practice my German and discuss deep ecology. With everyone, it was a time of encouragement and sympathy. During finals, every exchange ended with wishes of good luck and gentle admonishments to get some more sleep and to take care of oneself.

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Many first-year students want singles and private bathrooms. In my opinion, this mentality reflects how some students first think about success. Upon arrival, you may want to isolate yourself and only focus on your studies. Over time, you start to realize that your success isn’t dependent on others’ failures. In fact, connecting with other people and hearing about their passions is a great way to deepen your education.

So, even those late night talks in robes and sweatpants have value. They’re an integral part of the Princeton experience, and a pleasant reminder that you belong.