Cochabamba is a city in Bolivia known for its water. Ever since the 2001 Water War, the struggle for fair access to water enveloped the city in a brutal back and forth between national police and citizen brigades. In fact, Cochabamba’s Water War is one of the only examples of a united populace forcing the de-privatization of a public good since the 1980s, when global institutions started enforcing neoliberal policies in developing countries. Fundación Abril, an organization that fights for water and sanitization for all, was both birthed from the Water War and named for it — Abril meaning April as that was the last month of fighting in 2001 before the water was given back to the people. Oscar Olivera founded the Fundación after serving as the face and voice of the popular revolt. This context has been key to my experience volunteering for Oscar and Fundación Abril.

Fundación Abril’s main goals are to increase access to clean water as a common good and to collectively support labor and community. This mission takes many shapes, from rainwater catchment in schools without running water to urban gardens and workshops on organic farming. As a volunteer, I have been lucky enough to work on a variety of the small projects that make up the Fundación’s larger vision: I have helped students harvest vegetables in their own school garden, poured cement for water tank construction and translated grant applications from Spanish to English. No day is average; I enjoy running around to different parts of the city. I have been able to meet incredible people and discover a new set of passions because I have such a diverse portfolio of responsibilities. I think the breadth of Fundación Abril’s vision comes from its origins. After the Water War, how could one separate a community’s connection to the land from their resistance to foreign corporate interest? The Water War brought seemingly disparate issues into scope as part of the same wider conflict.

Having studied the Water War, working with Oscar has felt like working alongside a piece of history. But the vibe in our office has always been one of equal partnership. I am just a volunteer, but the staff at Fundación Abril has made me feel included from the beginning. On my first day, I walked in on a meeting with Fundación’s leadership,  so I asked if I should sit outside until it was over. They told me to pull up a chair and listen. Everyone there understands that we need to work side by side in order to achieve the organization’s ambitious goals.

My time at Fundación Abril has taught me that the mission and intention of who I work for is more important than organizational resources or size. It’s a question of values, and I finally understand where my values lie. I will always choose listening before speaking, local activists before foreign NGOs, and on-the-ground solutions before worldwide plans. I guess I can add that to the long list of things I am taking away from my Bridge Year experience. At Princeton, I will be sure to incorporate what I learned from Oscar and Fundación Abril into what I choose to study and pursue.

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Princeton University boasts nearly 300 student organizations, meaning that there is something for everyone. If poetry was your thing in high school, there’s a poetry and spoken word club waiting you. If you preferred singing or dancing, there are dozens of a cappella and dance groups that will suit your need. We even have clubs you never thought you needed to be a part of until now. One of those clubs is the Cheese and Bad Movie Club.

This club arose when the Cheese Club was looking for a way to bring in more members. What could possibly be better at attracting new members than bad movies? Soon enough, the Cheese and Bad Movie Club was born. Although the club might sound a little crazy at first, growing their numbers is exactly what they did.

The premise of the club is exactly as the name suggests: you eat cheese while watching bad movies. However, this cheese is no ordinary cheese. The club serves only the finest of cheeses. From Gouda to bleu to sheep to Brie, the cheese and bad movie club serves it all. The movies don’t disappoint either. Some highlights from this past semester include "Repo Man: The Genetic Opera," "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes," "Battlefield Earth" and "Sharknado." If you haven’t heard of any of these movies before, I promise you, they are some of the best-of-the-worst bad movies you will find. Plus, the films are screened in the classroom where Albert Einstein used to guest lecture, which makes everything even more exciting.

Co-presidents of the club Brigid Ehrmantraut and Zach Feig comment, “CaBaM may be the least orthodox student organization at Princeton, but we're certainly one of the most down to earth. Come for the cheese; stay for the movies!”

Cheese and Bad Movies is one of the many fun clubs and organizations Princeton has to offer. Click here to see a list of other clubs.

To an onlooker, it must have looked like I was auditioning for a Life Alert commercial — “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” With a sickening crack, my right foot twisted beneath me, sending me tumbling to my dorm room floor. Curling up in pain, I played the sound over and over in my mind, watching with wide eyes as my foot swelled up and adopted a green tinge.

December 10, 2016. The calendar had said it was almost time for break — but clearly, I’d taken it a little too literally.

A few hours later, I found myself hobbling across campus with pain shooting through my right foot and absolutely no idea of what was to come. I had only ever broken one bone before: a pinkie finger back in 2003, when my bike veered into a mailbox and ever-so-inconveniently crushed my right hand during the second grade cursive unit. Away from home, I’d never had an injury — or anything more than the common cold, for that matter. Now, having arrived in the lobby of McCosh Health Center, I stared dejectedly at the hours sign before me. Of course, my freak accident had occurred on a weekend — and after-hours, at that. Noting an emergency after-hours buzzer on the wall, I weighed my options. However, hopping on one foot back to my residential college wasn’t too appealing, so I eventually mustered the courage to press the button. Immediately, the voice on the intercom welcomed me into the after-hours clinic, and I was hit with a wave of relief. As so many times before, Princeton was here to look out for me.

Upstairs, a nurse examined my foot in the after-hours clinic. Noting its swollen appearance, she presented me with two options: I could wait to get x-rays on Monday, when the McCosh x-ray technician would be back, or I could skip the wait and have Public Safety (PSAFE) transport me to the local emergency room. After a second glance at the Frankenstein of a foot before me, I immediately chose the latter. While I waited for PSAFE to pick me up, the nurse brought me a water bottle and some vanilla yogurt. “Here, honey,” she said, smiling sweetly. “Snack on this. You might be in there for a while.”

She was right. In the ER, I was wheeled back and forth from the exam room to the waiting room, where I sat envisioning the months ahead. Finally, the doctor walked over and delivered my diagnosis: I’d fractured my fifth metatarsal bone, and would need to see an orthopedic doctor immediately for casting. The recovery time was eight weeks. She splinted my foot as this information sunk in, and then another staff member came over and gave me a crash course in how to use crutches. A half an hour later, I was dropped off in the parking lot with a second PSAFE officer, who helped me out of my wheelchair and into his car, slid my crutches onto the adjacent seat, and shut the door behind me — a routine that was entirely foreign to me, but would soon become second nature.

Back in my residential college that night, I was faced with a startling realization: my familiar routine was now Mission Impossible. I never take the elevator. Now, I could not take the stairs. Normally, when I miss a meal in the dining hall, I can pop over to WaWa, a convenience store on campus, or the University Store — both of which are less than a five-minute walk from my dorm room. Now, such a walk was out of the question. Luckily, my home-away-from-home continued to look out for me with motherly care. Shortly after I returned to my room, there was a knock at my door as my best friend delivered me dinner from a restaurant on in downtown Princeton While I ate, she helped me in any way possible: polishing the newly exposed toenails on my right foot, laughing as I recounted my freak accident for the tenth time, and brainstorming a game plan for the following day. When she left, I called my parents, who decided that they would drive to campus to pick me up. There were three days of classes remaining before break but, having been medically excused by the ER, I was heading home to see a doctor on Long Island.

At home, I quickly learned that humor was the best — and only — way for me to deal with my injury. Immediately, my younger sister stationed me in my favorite blue armchair and placed a cowbell at my side. My voice wasn’t injured — I could simply call out if I needed something — but the cowbell fit my personality. It was whimsical. It was outrageous. It made us laugh. Since I could no longer carry items around (crutches have a sneaky way of stealing the use of your feet and hands), my mom gave me sweatshirts with built-in “kanga-pouches” where I could store a water bottle, my phone and whatever snack I not so surreptitiously crutched my way into the kitchen to retrieve.

My injury gave me newfound appreciation for things I had previously taken for granted. After a month on crutches, my four weeks in a walking boot rendered me a child again. Suddenly, walking was the most exhilarating task imaginable. I walked outside to watch stars dot the night sky; I walked down the shoreline of my favorite beach; I walked from one end of the living room to the other simply because I could. I walked (at a snail’s pace, granted — but I was pacing nonetheless). 

Arriving back to campus for second semester — my walking boot and crutches 100 miles behind me in my home on Long Island — I couldn’t help but laugh when I spotted a bright blue wristband in my dorm room. There, in block letters, were the two once-dreaded words: “PAGANO, BRIANA.” Smiling, I reached out for a thumbtack and pinned the emergency room bracelet to my corkboard. When I’d first broken my foot two months prior, I’d torn the wristband off in frustration, desperate to banish all proof of the injury from existence.  

No, it wasn’t the break I’d imagined — but it was a great winter break nonetheless.

And now, I was ready to remember.

One of Princeton’s newest clubs is the Conservation Society. The club is made up of students who are passionate about making a large difference in protecting the planet. It is involved with various projects including summer internship opportunities, bringing speakers to campus, organizing nature hikes, and most importantly, encouraging students to think about how we can work towards greater conservation of the animals and plants on this earth.

So far, the club has seen great success. In October, we held a conservation fair where more than 200 students attended. Various club members had posters highlighting some of the unique volunteer opportunities available for students. These included Projects Abroad, Round River, the National Parks Service, and even working at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB), a penguin rehabilitation center (see my blog about penguins here.) In December, the club brought in a speaker from the New Jersey Marine Mammal Stranding Center to give a lecture about the marine mammals in the New Jersey area. Students learned what they can do to help these animals and what to do if they ever see a stranded animal. Most recently, the club partnered with the BBC Network to have a special prescreening of "Planet Earth II" at the Princeton Garden Theatre and a moderating a talk with the CEO of the World Wildlife Foundation.

In this day and age, where our environment is changing every minute, promoting conservation efforts is critical to improving our future world. Noah Mihan '19, club president, describes the impetus behind starting the Conservation Society: “When my friends and I came to Princeton, we searched so hard for a club that would focus on large-scale conservation, one that would send students on research trips in the summer, repair trails and raise awareness about conserving the massive biodiversity on our planet. We never found one. So we decided to, well, just make our own!”

The club is always growing and improving. In the near future, the Conservation Society hopes to host a talk on climate change, send students on Princeton-funded research trips to Africa and do a club-wide trip to the American Prairie Reserve in Montana.

This month marks the start of my last semester at Princeton! Here are some things that happened in February:

At the start of the month, there was a huge snowstorm, blanketing the campus in snow. Fun snow activities included sledding down Whitman Residential College hill and cute snowmen sightings around campus.

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Then the snow melted away, and spring semester began. I shopped for a ton of classes and finally decided to take STC (Science and Technology) 209: Transformations in Engineering and the Arts, WWS/MAE (Woodrow Wilson School/ Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) 353: Science and Global Security, and AST (Astrophysics) 203: The Universe. 

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Typically, students take four to five classes per semester, but most seniors will take two to three classes their spring semester to have extra time to work on their senior thesis. Like most seniors, I've been spending most of time outside of class working on my thesis, which is about smart homes and the Internet of Things (IoT). My research includes interviewing people who own smart homes, and it's always fun seeing their smart home set-ups and learning about their perceptions of IoT technology.

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Aside from classes and working on my thesis, I've been hanging out with friends, attending every Lunar New Year celebration on campus for yummy Chinese food, and spending lots of time outdoors thanks to the weirdly warm weather lately. 

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The last week of the month felt more like May than February, and the bout of warm weather made me realize that this, indeed, is the beginning of the end. My time here at Princeton is almost over! It made me excited for the future but nostalgic for the past four years. However, there are still many months and things to do before I graduate, and until then, I'm looking forward to enjoying the rest of the semester, learning, growing and spending time with all the people on this beautiful campus before I leave :) 

It's about that time of year again: first semester finals are finished (for the most part) and now it's time to finally relax before the next one starts