The college admissions process is admittedly terrifying. Never again will you have to put yourself up to such objectification. That’s not true; many of you will have to do it in another four years. But for now—woo! You have the power now! You will travel to all the schools that sent you an acceptance letter.

Princeton Preview! In which you meet thousands of potential peers. In which you look at campus, slack-jawed, wondering how so much beauty can be situated in New Jersey. In which you try and ditch your parents so you look like an actual student. Based on my own preview experience, here are three things you don’t want to miss.

1. Spontaneous conversations. Try to avoid the following topics: SAT scores, AP tests, other schools you got into—pretty much anything involving high school achievement. But I remember meeting a lot of future Princeton students through preview. It’s a good way to test whether you’ll like a place or not. More so than buildings, classes, sports, you’ll be interacting with the people.

2. This Side of Princeton. There is some crazy artistic talent here. After dinner, there will be a show at Richardson Auditorium showing off various vocal, dance and theater groups. Whether you’re interested in the arts or not, this event is incredibly entertaining.

3. Wander the campus. When I recollect my own preview experience, no factor stands out more than the sheer beauty of campus. It’s beautiful in the spring, flowers are blooming, green overcomes brown, attractive people are wearing shorts. Try to wander without a map. If you aren’t moved, maybe you should consider another school.

Hello, hello, hello!

For those of you who attended the first Princeton Preview on April 10, you may have seen me leading a tour of our awesome Art Museum. 

I applied to be a student tour guide last spring (my freshman year), having no prior art history knowledge. Most of what drew me to the position was the opportunity to connect with diverse audiences (we offer 45-minute "Highlights Tours" to the public every Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.) and share with them my love of learning about art. The heads of the student guide program, which was actually started by a student a few years ago, run a week-long Art Boot Camp program over the break between finals and class, and for a week all of the new guides are immersed in the world of art, learning details about curation and the museum's collection. We are also taken on a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where we see other collections that relate to our pieces. 

During my training to be a guide, I learned that the Princeton University Art Museum opened in 1882 with a private collection of pottery. Since then, the collection has expanded to more than 72,000 pieces of art that get displayed on a rotating basis. We also have one of the most expansive collections of Chinese calligraphy and painting outside of China. 

At Preview, I gave a tour of the museum's most prized possessions, including a painting by Claude Monet and a silkscreen by Andy Warhol. My tour was followed by another tour led by an awesome guide, and it was a special collaboration with the LGBT center on campus. Next time you are on campus, stop by the museum and maybe we'll have an opportunity to meet.

 

 

My first day of college was expectedly terrifying. I was terrifically self-aware—aware of my tie-dye T-shirt; aware that my parents’ comforting words would get me on a plane at 5 p.m.; and aware that I knew no one in a place that was to be my future home. I entered my room to find a bunk bed, hot air, and no fan or ac. But my room was to improve when one of my neighbors asked me to lunch. The conversation we shared was forgettable, but the sheer relief of actually engaging in a conversation with someone who wasn’t my mother or father was overwhelming.

My lunch date belonged to a larger system of neighbors I learned to call my “zee group.” The zee group is made up of 12-20 freshmen and one RCA (Residential College Adviser) who all live in close proximity to one another. I must admit that my zee group had little impact on my freshman year. I’m fairly suspicious when it comes to making friends; I don’t trust social systems of the sort, preferring to instead find my own friends. However, I would learn that other zee groups bonded harder than oxygen and hydrogen.

I surprised myself when I decided to become an RCA for Mathey College. My reasoning wasn’t entirely clear—I felt an undeniable pull to the position. Looking back on it, I think I was sick of the egocentricity of college life. I wanted people to need me on some fundamental level.

[caption]Our Christmas Party[/caption]

Well, I’m three quarters into my first year as an RCA, and so far so good. No deaths. No injuries. Some mangled pride. I like my zee group a lot—16 kids who are extraordinarily different from each other. Throughout the year, I learned wild things about them all. One has, like, 2,200 Twitter followers, and another holds the Ugandan record for the 50m butterfly. But more important, they all treat each other with respect, and they have found solace in being a small part of a larger group. The zee group system is not for everyone, nor is it Princeton telling you whom you should befriend. Rather, it’s a support system. The zee group and RCA are a way of making sure that incoming freshman are never truly alone.

Little did I know that at Princeton there would be a multitude of other avenues for me to express myself through fashion, even in an academic setting.

The week before last, I celebrated my 21st birthday. For me, a typical birthday celebration at Princeton usually looks something like this: After a day of classes, my closest friends organize a lovely dinner at a nearby restaurant and we call it a day. This year, my birthday looked something like this:

I woke up at 3:30 in the morning to climb to the summit of this mountain

By 6:30 a.m. I found myself here, on the summit of the second-tallest mountain in Kenya. Although it certainly wasn’t my typical birthday celebration, and although I never imagined I would spend my 21st birthday climbing a mountain, I certainly think it was a memorable way to spend it!

 

 

Of everything I thought I would learn and develop from my time in the Bridge Year Program in Senegal, I would never have expected yoga to be part of it.

I lead a Scholar Lifestyle because of my passion for learning. But this passion didn’t exist at all until I came to Princeton.

Before entering Princeton, my motivation to learn was simple: to obtain the knowledge to get better grades. Working hard was just a means to raise my GPA.

But eventually my old preconceptions about learning died away. The rigor of Princeton’s courses demanded more from me than working hard for the sake of getting high grades. I realized there needed to be a higher purpose behind my hours of struggling to write analytical papers and straining to absorb thousands of words into my brain.

After my first semester, a thought came to me: I mentor, write and run because I’m truly passionate about each Lifestyle. If I could apply the same passion to learning, then maybe I could endure large amounts of it, just like how I push myself in other areas of my life.

I began to evaluate why I enjoyed reading literature in the first place. I remembered how my life changed when I picked up a tattered copy of "The Sea-Wolf" by Jack London in the 7th grade. The book turned me into an avid reader after years of shunning books as modes of storytelling. Jack London's prose really captivated me, and he changed my perspective on reading. To this day I attribute my decision to become an English major to Jack London.

At the start of my second semester, I began reading literature with a renewed purpose: to gain something from everything I read like I unexpectedly did with "The Sea-Wolf." Eventually the hard work didn’t feel like work anymore. I felt like I was truly gaining something other than a means to obtain a good grade. I was gaining awareness about the history, philosophy, religion and politics of the past. Regardless of my final grade on a paper or assignment, I always walked away with an invaluable gift that couldn’t be dampened by red ink.

As my junior year approaches, I actually feel excited about conducting research on Jack London. I feel an obligation to continue his scholarship so more students may feel inspired by his writing. A few years ago, I would have never imagined doing research for sheer enjoyment. But now I enjoy learning, which I view as a type of self-development, and I have Princeton's rigor to thank for that.

I first met Saumya, in a way, the summer before freshman year. After my class was assigned to residential colleges, the Facebook group "Rocky College-2015" formed, and Saumya, true to her gregarious nature, friended most of the people in it. I think I met Kelly while brushing my teeth, but I'm not quite sure. We lived in the same residence hall, and somehow she became one of my friends there. I did not meet Nikhila, our final roommate, until Saumya suggested the four of us room together. 

As Nikhila and I talked for the first time, we quickly figured out that we would both be spending the summer after freshman year on Princeton's campus, she to work on an independent project with the computer science department, and I to do research with the astrophysics department. On a whim, she suggested we room together over the summer as well, and I agreed. We both wanted to save money, so we found a couple of other students and formed a mini co-op to cook food. (You can see our creations from that summer here.)

The summer was fun, and I was eager to start sophomore year with the four of us together in Holder Hall. It was a busy two semesters, full of problem sets, late night conversations, eager trips to ice cream stores in Princeton and parties to watch Pixar movies. Through all the chaos, I got to know each of my roommates better and to respect them more and more—Kelly for her calm and organized way of handling challenges, Saumya for her unfailingly friendly nature, and Nikhila for her creative and out-of-the-box approach to life.

Junior year has brought us all closer together. My roommates are the people I know best at Princeton, and the people at Princeton who know me best, and I often turn to them for encouragement, advice and inspiration, which they never fail to provide. In one particularly memorable moment, Kelly and Nikhila organized a surprise Valentine's Day party after a busy week in February. I came back to the dorm late on a Friday and found a desk covered with flowers and cookies.

I also found a mug on my desk, which Nikhila and Kelly had hand-painted with a quote from George Eliot: "Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” Nikhila, Kelly and Saumya are my faithful hands at Princeton and will shape my memories of the school for years to come.

I think most students would agree with me when I say that Princeton is an incredibly safe place. Perhaps because the school is surrounded by quiet suburbia and protected by a very visible on campus police force, I had never felt endangered while on campus. But, that all changed on a recent Friday morning.

I lead a Runner Lifestyle because there are times when I need to clear my mind.

Amidst my busy Princeton schedule, it’s easy for me to get stuck in a rut. Although going to class, studying and finishing my assignments are integral parts of the college experience, I feel like I shouldn’t be restricted to this cycle. Sure, coupling in some extracurricular activities and my Mentor and Writer Lifestyles add more dimension to my work. But it is still essentially work—something that requires mental energy.

This mental rut is something I’ve striven to break so that I can get more out of everyday life. Running has helped me do that.

I became a long distance runner four years ago so I could focus my energy on something that wouldn’t tax my mind. People say running is a mental sport, and I agree to an extent. But it requires a different type of mental energy than learning or writing. Each run is a lesson in calming my mind. It’s the epitome of learning from an experience.

Running is a form of meditation for me. I consider it a unique type of catharsis. Compared with mentoring and writing, which draws my attention to other places, running grounds me in the present moment. While some people use running as a time to think, I use running to clear my thoughts. After using my mind to think all day, it’s refreshing to simply think about nothing.

At Princeton, running makes my days come alive. Every day is like a new adventure. Even familiar routes along the Delaware and Raritan Canal become exciting because I venture through them with the knowledge that every day is a new day, and I should appreciate the day for its singularity. Running gives me the opportunity to escape from the confines of my mind and live life.