I'm a physics major, and studying that subject takes up the majority of my time. But one of the benefits of attending a liberal arts university like Princeton is that physics is never the only thing I am learning. I have taken a five-person seminar on autobiographical fiction in Latin America taught by a Mexican author and intellectual, a lecture on Grand Strategy by a prominent international relations theorist, and a class about the history of the United States' involvement in world affairs taught by an expert in U.S.-Indonesian relations.

Right now, I'm finishing up a very physics-heavy semester, but even so I've managed to explore nonscientific parts of the world. One of my favorite ways to do this is by listening to some of the many guest speakers who come to Princeton. For example, one afternoon after my condensed matter class, I ran from Jadwin Hall, home to the physics department, to Robertson Hall, home to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. That afternoon, the Woodrow Wilson School was hosting a talk by Christopher Hill, the former Ambassador to Iraq. I had read about Hill in various newspaper articles, so I was excited to see him in person.  

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The subject of Hill's talk was global hotspots. He began by delivering what ended up being a rather depressing overview of current events. Syria, he thought, was a pressing, serious problem that was metastasizing across the Middle East. Ukraine was an especially concerning situation given Europe's dependence on Russian gas. North Korea's new leadership was more belligerent than the last; China was beginning to take on a dark, concerning role.  

The ambassador concluded his talk with more general reflections about diplomacy, which were not much cheerier. Diplomacy, he noted, was ultimately about asking people to do things they would rather not do. To make such requests successful, leaders must rely on personal relationships they have built with others. The alternative is to use force, but Hill says war is a horrific event that people tend to underestimate. 

Leaving Ambassador Hill's presentation, I was thinking about issues very different from the equations and graphs that usually fill my time. Though his talk was quite heavy, I was glad I went and it gave me an opportunity to learn about a field different from my own.

I take my Sundays slow. It is usually the day I awake at my latest (8:30 a.m.) forgoing run and gym and for at least the first two hours the miles and weights of history, Arabic, art and urban studies. This time is for those small pleasures of campus life that one would miss, I think, if one did not deliberately pull back the pace.

So one morning after showering I returned to my room and dressed, tying my feet in my lace-ups, but noticing spring dancing outside my window, I took off the heavy shoes for canvas espadrilles. A few books and paper in my backpack, and I descended 1938 Hall slowly, as I was to pass this morning in good company.

Lovia met me in Wilson’s courtyard at 9 a.m., and from there we proceeded up campus trading bits of small talk. While I have often spoken with Lovia in passing and at events, this morning was to be our  first long outing since middle fall.

Not too many others were out, unless one counts the squirrels that always are digging, skipping, climbing. Once past FitzRandolph gate, we crossed Nassau Street and continued into town among more people, but it seemed most were still dreaming. Our first stop was Terra Momo, a bakery two blocks into town from the University beside a cigar shop of attractive smells and across from the town’s public library. The bakery is small—there is only one table by the storefront window—but the selection is vast (nearly indomitable for the hungry and choice averse). Lovia and I deliberated for quite some time, being asked by the clerk three times if we were ready and declining until the last. I asked her if she would share a chocolate croissant with me, and soon learned she had gag reflex to it. Funny but tragic I thought…

We took our breakfast to Infinitea, one of many coffee and tea places in town, but by far the most eclectic with tables, tapestries and of course teas that the owners have gathered on their travels abroad. Infinitea was where Lovia and I had our last conversation months before, and taking up nearly the same space we started a new conversation between bites and sips. We settled on a broad but pertinent topic concerning the opportunity and concomitant challenges of life at the University. The individual here encounters many expectations, we agreed, some that we should conform to and others we should agitate against, and both being choices on which we ultimately stake our identity for or against.   

The direction of the conversation reminded Lovia of an essay by Zadie Smith called “Speaking in Tongues,” which she was carrying in her folio. Smith’s uses voice as the leitmotif in the essay, which serves as a larger metaphor of identity. How we speak relays much about who we are—male, female, of the metropole or country, and from which of the myriad groups in either place. Do we subdue certain inflections, replace certain slang for words of more common currency, or do we lead a bilingual existence comfortably or uncomfortably? Smith’s foremost concern is that we realize there is no standard voice, or rather a standard that could also appreciate variety and difference, the sources of imagination for Smith. Sitting with Lovia, I felt my own voice free to express my interest in aesthetics and disinterest in late parties, my pursuit of something good and those things that quickly detour me from that pursuit, all of which was said in my low voice of Southern bent. I hope I offered Lovia the same comfort to speak as she felt. She told me of the tensions she feels—should she read and write with only the company of pen and author, or should she yield to more extroverted pressures? Undoubtedly there are times on campus, and life generally speaking, in which our voice should take up a synced flow, but just the same there are times when we should yell and affirm our own specific patois, if not of vocal tone then surely that of our character, in the face of real or imagined univocality.

Breakfast long gone and cups similarly empty, Lovia asked if I would accompany her to the bookstore. We arrived to two doors still closed, and even though it would be a half hour before they opened, we decided to wait on a bench nearby. Our conversation continued interspersed with weather talk as the sudden onset of spring demanded some acknowledgment. In time the store owner rounded the corner and invited us to enter. Lovia became the first customer of the day and I a close second as we entered a space of almost infinite voices. There was one in particular she wanted me to read, and I had the same desire for her. “Here,” she said when we were among the fiction, “read this Hemingway short story.” I took the book and gave her a collection of Robert Walser shorts stories in return. I read Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” A man and a woman sit in a bar in the tropics and there is not much more plot than that. Most of the story is in what is said between the two, their shifts pauses and subtlety. It was quite different from Walser’s shorts in which there is rarely voice in dialogue. Lovia agreed, then as if on a whim she asked to read Hemingway again, but aloud. For four pages of text my voice tried to take up that of two others culminating in their contentious trade:

"I said we could have everything."

"We can have everything."

"No, we can't."

"We can have the whole world."

"No, we can't."

"We can go everywhere."

"No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore."

"It's ours."

The man and woman swing over a tense ambivalence between them, perhaps an unwanted pregnancy. I believe much the same vacillating is expressed in the sentiments behind our voices here at the University from time to time. Princeton can prompt one to feel you can say and be everything, and sometimes feel mute and be nothing. Neither feeling gets to reality. Both presuppose our voice as too separate and solipsistic. “It’s ours,” says the woman, expressing the shared circumstance of her problem. Similarly voice is a shared property of our community. I realized this as Lovia and I crossed back over to Nassau Street and parted at Firestone Plaza. I was quite happy to have passed the morning with her voice. It imparted thoughts into my own and perhaps it will do the same to whomever reads this. One’s voice will find challenge, skepticism and disagreement at Princeton, and often for the betterment of its tone. But no need of fear, because there is much more time for it to hum, laugh and sing with others, just as mine did that Sunday morning. It feels good to speak.

Over the past few days, I had the chance to interview members of pastoralist Maasai communities near Amboseli National Park. We arrived here late last week for the second part of our current course, "Ecology and Conservation of African Landscapes" with Paula Kahumbu, and a group of us are currently working on a project related to women’s empowerment. Specifically, we are interested in how education efforts supported by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and Kenyan government have impacted local communities, and we will have a chance to speak to representatives of the KWS as well as the U.S. ambassador to Kenya later this week about our work here. It was a wonderful experience to learn about the communities and their culture. Up to this point, we’ve been exposed mostly to the ecology and biology of animals and vegetation, which has been very informative and has taught me important ways to structure my thinking and questions, but I love the feeling of working directly with a community to evaluate the effectiveness of certain programs and to think about how to address their needs.

It’s been extremely enlightening for me. Before our visit to the communities, I thought the greatest obstacle that prevented children from getting a good education in this area would be the cost. In some ways this was true, but there seemed to be a number of cultural considerations that affect the ability of certain children to attend school as well. In one community we visited, only 22 of the roughly 50 primary school children from 2013 went on to secondary school. Of the graduating class, only nine were girls and only two of those girls went on to attend secondary school. To me, it seems critical to explore and address the reasons for this disparity, and this is the sentiment we hope to inspire in those to whom we will present our work. 

I enjoyed this experience so much—it is the kind of thing that evokes passion in me, which makes me believe that it is possible to apply things I have learned and am learning in classes to effect some change in this world. I have always felt that an education should be more than simply rote memorization or competition for grades, and I am very grateful for the chance to experience education as something more tangible and rewarding than that. 

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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.

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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

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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!

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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.

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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.