Hello hello!

So, I’m assuming many of you who have looked into campus life at Princeton and have stumbled upon the existence of eating clubs, which are basically communities in which students eat meals and go to social events.

So, before I continue this post, I want to clarify that I have no problem with eating clubs; I just decided not to join one. My decision was largely based on the fact that I have a wonderful community in my hall and in the Center for Jewish Life, I like my dining plan, and I am happy where I’m at right now. Because I made the conscious decision not to join, and have been thoroughly happy with my decision, I wanted to share some insight into the system in general.

Here are a few things you may have assumed about the clubs, and here is the bigger picture:

1) Eating clubs are the only option for dining/social communities:

FALSE:  I can proudly say that as a student still on the dining hall plan, I have a great social community, and promise to write many many posts about my friends. Also, I get to stay in my residential college, which is super nice and a great living arrangement.

BUT, the dining hall isn’t the only option if you decide that clubs aren’t for you. I found this fabulous website detailing the alternate options, which include co-ops where students get together and cook their own meals, and advice on how to successfully go independent, which means you have no meal plan and cook in the kitchens located in your dorm buildings.

2) Membership is the only way to spend time at eating clubs:

FALSE: I’ll just outright disprove this one because I have spent time myself at eating clubs. Two things to keep in mind here:

1. Meal exchange: basically, your friend in an eating club takes you to eat with them, and then you take them to eat with you in the dining hall.
2. Many events (like semi-formals, which are fun!) involve plus-ones, and I have already gone to a bunch of events as my friends’ “dates.”

Long story short, not joining does not mean total isolation from the eating club experience.

3) Everyone joins:

FALSE: Only one out of three of my roommates joined. With the other options listed above, joining can be a consideration, not a must. 

4) You have to compete to get into all of them:

FALSE: Many of the clubs work on a sign-in system, which is... exactly what it sounds like. You express interest, go to some fun orientation events, and then sign-in to join. 

5) Joining an eating club dictates your social options:

Yes, you guessed it: FALSE.  If it hasn’t become clear from above, Princeton is not at all divided into a world of eating club members and lost souls. We are lucky to have a diverse group of people and a diverse group of options. What’s best, though, is that all of these options are highly integrated, making Princeton a multidimensional experience. 

Sorry I was a bit long on this post. Stay tuned… I may or may not have tons of awesome photos from my play in my next post!

This is my roommate, Jacob, and I. We live together in a single-turned-double in Whitman College, and this post is a brief reflection on our relationship.

To tell you the truth, when I filled out the housing application last summer, I was hoping for a single in a large suite with many other suite mates. I enjoy my personal space, but I thought having a group of suite mates would be an instant friend base, the best of both worlds. I never really reflected on the far more probable chances of ending up in a double. In fact, finding out over the summer about my room placement, I was confused about whether I had a roommate at all, since on a floor plan the room was labeled as a single (which it used to be).

Come move-in day, it turned out that I definitely had a roommate: Jacob crushed me in an unnerving bear hug that only a college offensive lineman can give. I say unnerving because I’m not usually physical with strangers, and the next few days quickly demonstrated how Jacob and I are at opposite ends on the spectrum of socially outgoing individuals.

Fortunately, there’s truth to the saying that “opposites attract,” maybe more appropriately with the caveat “some common ground helps out, too.” Jacob and I complement each other. Jacob invites anybody and everybody to sit and chat for a few minutes on his giant beanbag chair, so I talk to people I probably wouldn’t say hi to in the elevator. I sleep happily in the top bunk, he holds down the fort in the lower bunk. I’ll walk into the room and Jacob, a white Jewish kid from New York will be belting out hearty African American gospel music, “homework” for his favorite class this semester, African American Gospel Music (AAS 305), which in turn will spark a conversation about racism and privilege. On other days, Jacob will walk into the room as I, a white kid born Mexican and raised in Georgia, am absorbed in a reading by Marx for Radical Political Thought (POL 305), and then we’ll talk about the global exploitation of people and resources. Jacob jokes that I'm off-the-rocker radical, and I tease him for his soft spot for this song, but in reality, we've both come to learn and appreciate how much more there is to us than meets the eye.

In the next few days, the room draw starts for next year's accommodations. While living in a double is not without its quirks, I've come a far way from approaching having a roommate as "coping" to actually enjoying and appreciating the dynamic, and I'll definitely miss it next year from the solitude of what will hopefully be a single. So, wrapping up this post: Shout out to Jacob Cannon, role model to roommates everywhere and pretty much one of the friendliest people you'll ever meet!

I hadn’t heard of the collegiate a cappella craze until I began touring Northeastern schools during my senior spring. Fast forward to freshman fall, I find myself auditioning for The Princeton Tigertones. Two years, seven tours, and a hundred gigs later, here I am. Every weeknight, I hang out with a bunch of dudes and we snap and sing together. Not how I pictured young adulthood, but by and large, I’m pretty pleased with myself.

We perform local gigs every two weeks or so—corporate parties, bar mitzvahs, country clubs, high schools etc. And our repertoire accommodates this broad range of shows—the Temptations for your grandma, Coldplay for your conventional brother, and Bon Iver for your alternative brother.

Tours are the coolest part of it all. Every fall, spring, and summer we travel domestically or internationally. Usually Princeton alumni house us, and sometimes we get to stay at hotels for free if we sing at enough happy hours. In the past two years we’ve been to Britain, Brazil, Bermuda, and 'Bama. But even though we’re touring, we don’t feel like tourists. Performing allows us to really interact with a new place. We are emoting with people we’ve never seen and never will see again, but for the duration of that show, the feelings are real and beautiful.

Sophomore fall, I sang at a show that I can’t seem to get out of my head. It was at an after-school program for teenagers in Sao Paulo. We held a workshop and taught the kids how we warm up, harmonize, and even beat box. They were good, incredibly good considering the language difference. After the workshop and concert, we ate lunch together, and they showed off a little. The video below is from a particularly talented kid. He would later tell me (via translator) that the rap is about his life growing up impoverished in a tough part of Sao Paulo.

[embed]http://youtu.be/z-kBtOmj9N0[/embed]

His song blew me away, and the feeling of privilege I experienced upon listening was more profound than words can convey. I can’t explain why, but music has the ability to transcend all the little stuff that seems so important. From entrance to final chord, it’s just the performer, the audience, and the song.  

At Princeton, in addition to eating, hanging with friends, participating in fantastic classes and activities—all that jazz—we also do this thing called studying. For real! So just as much as everyone needs to have places to socialize, most people have little nooks and crannies on campus where they can slip away to study or read. Let me take you for a little tour of my favorite study spots and libraries!

I tutor and mentor because I understand the importance of encouragement and guidance. As a first-generation college student, I know that even a few kind words of advice can make all the difference between giving up and doing one’s best despite difficulties.

During high school, I spent my spare time tutoring elementary school students at local community centers and knew that I wanted to continue tutoring in college.

I learned about One-on-One Tutoring my freshman year. My friend Gracie ’13, who was an active mentor at the time, reached out to let me know that the program needed someone to tutor a kindergartener. I had a brief interview with the program’s senior community partner and started tutoring right away!

One-on-One Tutoring is a program sponsored by Princeton’s Student Volunteer Council (SVC), a student-led organization that sponsors more than 40 hands-on, direct service volunteer projects that operate weekly with community organizations in Princeton, Trenton, and surrounding areas. It offers many service opportunities and gives undergrads support to start innovative projects of their own.

One-on-One Tutoring, in particular, is an opportunity for young Princeton women to create and maintain a positive mentor-mentee relationship with girls of Latin-American background who live in Princeton. As a mentoring and tutoring program that matches Princetonians with girls from local elementary and middle schools, One-on-One provides weekly help with reading, study skills, and homework and more! In many cases (like my own) mentors spend their entire undergraduate career tutoring the same girl.

 

When I first met Tati, she was in Kindergarten. She was learning how to read and write words like “the,” “cat,” and “red,” and now she is in third grade, loves to read, writes in cursive, and says that Language Arts is her favorite subject. Our meetings are always the best. She is absolutely brilliant and loves to tell me stories about her friends, her nephew, and her puppy. If she finishes her homework early, she likes to make colorful cards for her friends and family and enjoys teaching me the lyrics to her favorite songs (including many by Taylor Swift…)

One-on-One Tutoring has given me the opportunity to teach, encourage, and inspire. It has also given me the opportunity to learn. I see tutoring Tati for the last few years as part of a larger accomplishment, including an increase in Latina/os who are pursuing a higher education.

One-on-One Tutoring is a reminder that being “in the nation’s service and in the service of all nations” can consist of reviewing the alphabet, reading colorful chapter books, and going over basic arithmetic with someone sweet and adorable.

 

 

 

It’s that time of year again—the time when everyone is starting to receive offers for summer internships and programs and a common question becomes, “Do you know what you’ll be doing this summer?” Although I’m not going through the internship process this time because I’ll be working on research for my thesis, all this talk has made me reflect a great deal on my experience as an intern with the Princeton Internships in Civic Service (PICS) program last year.

Last summer, I spent 10 weeks working as a PICS intern at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. I decided to apply to this internship for two reasons: first, because I am considering a career in medicine, and also because I wanted to spend my summer engaged in a meaningful project. I primarily worked within the Network Performance Group to help kick-start a new surgical safety initiative, work which I found particularly meaningful after attending conferences on surgical safety with my team and hearing from patients affected by poor care.

I would argue, however, that the best part of my PICS internship was the support and guidance that I received from my PICS supervisor and alumni partner. My supervisor genuinely cared about my interest in medicine and arranged many opportunities for me to observe surgeries, speak with various specialists about their work, and assist medical students with research. In addition, PICS interns are matched with an alumni partner, who not only funds part of the stipend that PICS awards its interns, but also makes the time to meet and speak to the interns about their experiences and interests. My alumni partner was generous enough to take his five interns out to dinner early on during the summer, and invited us all to his house for a barbeque late in the summer. It was incredible to have such a supportive network during my 10 weeks at Montefiore.  

I went into the summer hoping that I might learn a bit about my career goals while giving back to a community; I came out having learned a great deal about who I am and who I want to be. My summer interning at Montefiore, through the support of PICS, was a transformative experience for me, and I would encourage any Princeton student or prospective student to learn more about the incredible summer internship and program opportunities that Princeton offers. 

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. 

I spent my intersession break much like any other student: Relaxing, getting some sun and hanging out by a lazy river. And by lazy river I mean a river that was FROZEN SOLID.

Every year, Princeton’s oldest improv comedy group, Quipfire!, visits one of the major improv destinations in America. Last year, we went to Los Angeles. This year, our rotation of locations landed us in the arctic wasteland known as Chicago.

Our trip was an equal mix of business, pleasure, and -30 degree windchills. We took workshops with four professional improvisers, and we attended an improv show almost every night so we could see the experts in action. But we also found time to thrift shop, play WhirlyBall, and reenact scenes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

On the last day of the trip, we celebrated surviving the polar vortex by performing in a show with a group of Quipfire! alumni, many of whom improvise professionally in Chicago. It was cool to see how the activities you pursue at Princeton can affect your life once you graduate. Some of the alumni had never improvised before they joined Quipfire! as undergraduates, and now they perform at world-renowned improv theaters. 

Besides the exposed flesh warnings, the whole trip was an amazing experience. And it was completely funded by our group! We used the money we made from ticket sales to pay for plane tickets, workshops, and even a journey to the top of the Willis Tower.

Though the reason it was an unforgettable tour was not the self-funding, the workshops, the shows, or the frivolities. It was unforgettable because I spent a week with some of my favorite people in the world. And because the glacial winds permanently covered me in ice. Seriously guys, it was cold.

After flying 18 hours from China on the other side of the world and settling into this quaint, small town called Princeton, I found myself face-to-face with culture shock, academically, socially and otherwise.

I sat at the long table in Firestone Library’s DeLong Reading room. I often come to this room to do personal reading and informal studying. The room is on the first floor of the library and so one reads to the backdrop of constant foot traffic, a good rhythm for times of light reading. However, as I read my book, Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy, the floors were quieter than usual. It was the Sunday ending intercession, but it was also the start for many, especially my sophomore peers, of the second semester. That Sunday for a sophomore marks an important transition in the Princeton experience. Afterwards two decision must be made. The one that comes first in the week immediately following intercession is a social decision and the second coming later, but best given thought now, is an academic decision. Here I will consider the first of these decisions and the second in the succeeding post.

The social decision is one peculiar to Princeton. It is whether one will choose to take meals in a dining hall, eating club or pursue one of the independent eating options, though the question is often reduced to “Will you join an eating club?” That reduction betrays an oft polarizing thought regarding the clubs, which is that they are the conventional, and perhaps safest way for an upperclassman to pursue social life here. Some definitely think so, and others certainly think not. I was unsure. I do not know much about the clubs, having visited none this year and less than five times as a freshman. However, I did have quite the curiosity about this process that others have more definite opinions about, so I thought if I were to talk with substance about this side of Princeton that I needed a first-hand experience. I talked to a few friends about which place I should try to bicker (the name of the process used for clubs that are selective, as opposed to the process used by clubs that accept members on a first-come, first-served basis), and so I decided on Ivy Club. Set midway down Prospect Avenue, their selective process was supposed to consist of 10 interviews and be light on playful revelries.

The bicker process started on Sunday and was to continue for the next two nights. As I said earlier, I was quite into Boethius as Lady Philosophy led him to the point in which he could forsake matters of fortune and gain an understanding of what was actually worthwhile in life. Consequently, I missed the first day of bickering.

Around 7 p.m. the next evening I walked with the bickering throng onto Prospect Avenue and soon arrived at the steps to the mansion with the strobe navigation light out front. After a loud welcome, I found a very good friend who  told me what do: fill out this paper with a few interests (aesthetics, running, architecture), hand it in and be interviewed.

For the next few hours I had a series of conversations all over the various parts of the clubhouse mostly about my own interests with forays into more general topics. Save for a rather mundane tripartite question from one interviewer and a contest of charades, this is how the night went on in rather pleasant conversation. After a seventh interview, I was quite tired and so the last three would be for the final day of bicker.

My second day was quite like the first, though brief, as I had only to talk to three people. After a bit of talk on Slavic studies, ballet and the London skyline, I was back in the night air interspersed with the festive bickering of the other clubs along the street. Against expectation, I enjoyed the process, but therein lay the appeal of clubs. They are a chance to self-select into a community of people of similar interests out of a larger University community one may at times feel adrift in. And so for that opportunity I hoped to get in.

Two days later I woke up as I normally do for my morning run and found a note slipped under my door. My first thought was how unpleasant it must have been to be on deliveries some time between 10:30 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. I opened the envelope and the letterhead read “THE IVY CLUB,” the middle informed me that I was not selected, and the end was a salutary message from the club’s president. I put the note down, smiled at Lady Philosophy then onto teeth, push-ups, laces and out running as always. I took a different route this time, and found the views of Princeton from this new path quite nice and lovely as the sun brought the day’s blue morning. New paths, those are the ones I seek now. Beaten avenues are good, but when circumstance or choice puts us on new ones, well we may as well make them good, too, as there are so many here.