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.

One of my favorite statistics about Princeton is one which states that 70 percent of students change their major ...

Choosing where to go to college is a huge step, one that will affect you for the rest of your life. Although looking ahead towards your future is important, it is also crucial to understand and think about your past. I’ve taken some time to reflect on my own pre-university experience. I remember my alumni interviewer asked me why I applied to Princeton, but the real question is: why did I ultimately choose to enroll?

Since each student has a different motive for enrolling, I decided to put together a small collection of reasons why my fellow bloggers and I chose Princeton. Hopefully this will help shed some light on why we all love Princeton!

Personally, I chose to enroll at Princeton University because of the Woodrow Wilson School, the prestigious academics and the generous financial aid. Even in high school, I knew I wanted to focus on international relations in college before going to law school. Although many other schools could have helped me reach those goals, I had visited Princeton and the world renowned Woodrow Wilson School many times, and I felt at home with the students and professors. I love challenging myself, so the academics here really drew me in as well. Finally, the financial aid program at Princeton was truly a blessing; my family has two children in college at the moment, so Princeton’s willingness to help with the process was welcomed with open arms.

Michelle Greenfield '18: “I chose to come to Princeton because of the incredible opportunities students have (both research and extracurricular), the wonderful mentorship available by professors, the conversations I had with currents, and lastly the great atmosphere I felt when I visited.”

Abigail Denton '20: “Obviously, there are tons of incredible things about Princeton, but there were a few other equally good schools available to me. In the end, it came down to price. Princeton was the cheapest option for me because of its generous financial aid. Plus, it didn’t hurt that my brother - at the moment I opened the acceptance letter from Princeton - started jumping up and down, screaming that I had made it into the #1 school in the U.S. He loves lists and records, so being able to give him the joy of being connected to some sort of #1 ranking was simply the sweet icing on the delicious cake that is being accepted into a school with great academics, a welcoming student body and a generous financial aid system.”

Jordan Brown '19: “The main reason I chose Princeton was because I knew since around junior of high school that I'd want to major in economics; since Princeton is world-renowned for its economics department, I thought it would be a natural fit. I also thought that being immersed in such an intellectual group of people would certainly help me and push me to grow as well.” 

Ellie Maag '19: “Besides the incredible resources and professors, the thing that made Princeton the best fit for me was the student body. Students here are the kind of people that want to stay up all night discussing politics and philosophy. The kind of people who can move seamlessly from working on organic chemistry in a lab to starring in a dance show. Instead of ruthless, mechanical drive, I see warmth and passion in my peers. The people here are the best not because they want to beat everyone else but because their studies light up their lives.”

Teresa Irigoyen-Lopez '19: “For me, it was the Bridge Year Program that convinced me I had a lot to gain from what Princeton offers. In my high school dorm in a cold Norwegian fjord I stopped dreaming about the actual start of my University career and realized that taking a gap or 'bridge' year would be an incredible opportunity and that if Princeton was encouraging its incoming students to do such a thing it might really be a good fit for me!”

Right now, I’m sitting in a café in Copenhagen, waiting for the next film in the festival to start. 

How did I get here? Last semester, I took a class called “Vernacular Filmmaking” with Professor Erika Kiss. I wrote a final paper for the course on Thomas Vinterberg, a Danish filmmaker. 

This paper inspired me to look further into Danish cinema. I spoke to my professor about it, and she encouraged me to apply for funding to explore this research further. I applied, explaining my interest, and was granted funding to study in Copenhagen for a week. During this time, I’ll be researching Danish cinema and learning about documentary filmmaking at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Film Festival. 

Before I came to Princeton, the only films I watched were comedies and blockbuster hits with my family. All I knew was that I liked French and Norwegian and reading lots of books. 

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Since then, I’ve discovered so many fields. I’ve truly embraced the idea of interdisciplinary studies and taken classes about philosophy, politics, literature, languages, anthropology and film. 

As a high school student, the only path I could picture was studying English and becoming a lawyer. 

Now, it’s not so easy to plan my future. I can imagine being an anthropologist, a politician, a professor, a filmmaker, a businesswoman and even an archaeologist (inspired by my latest class on the Vikings). 

I’m enjoying my week so far in Copenhagen. I can’t wait until I find my next spark and study something completely new and exciting. 

One of the most common reactions I get when I introduce myself and say that I am studying Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is: "Wow, that sounds complicated! What is it like to study engineering?" I often don’t have enough time or energy to explain in depth what my experience studying engineering has been like or how my classes have shaped my thinking and way of approaching things; so I just say lazily shrug my shoulders and say, "It’s interesting but tough!" And while that is true, it does not really say much. My three years at Princeton have taught me a lot, and breaking down what the engineering experience is like is perhaps helpful for those trying to decide their majors or what they might want to study now!

Like all children, I grew up changing dream jobs every week and wanted to be everything from an author, dancer and scientist to a teacher. Yet, the one thing that stuck to me for the longest was an "arregladora," which is really a made-up profession that could be loosely translated to "a person who fixes things" -I came up with this career when I fixed a door lock in my childhood and found immense pleasure in it. As I got older I somehow became aware that such a profession already kind of existed under the mysterious name of an "engineer," so by the time I was applying to University I had already decided what my major would be. During my time at Princeton, making the connection between what we learn in class about eigenvalues or compressible flows and fixing things is often tough. But comparing my engineering classes to my other courses has allowed me to understand them much better, and studying a language at Princeton while pursuing an engineering degree has made me aware of many similarities!

An engineering degree starts just like a language class: you first have to learn the very basics. You can never construct phrases if you don’t know what verbs or nouns are. So my first two years were packed with classes on fluids, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, dynamics and differential equations. And just like one gets bored of conjugating verbs but doesn't get bored of being able to understand native speakers use the language, I was growing tired of solving problem sets but not really being able to design a system to meet a real need. As I have taken more classes, I have moved from the "elementary" level classes to the "intermediate," and I will hopefully eventually reach the "advanced" ones. I am now taking classes with fancier names such as “MAE 342: Space System Design” or “MAE 427: Energy Conversion and the Environment: Transportation Applications’, and it is the concepts that I first had to learn that have become more apparent in the overall idea of engineering and its creative application.

Just like the more I studied a language the more I realized native-like fluency is an admirable goal but probably impossible, the more I advance in the completion of my degree requirements, the better I see how engineering is not aiming for perfection but constant improvement. It is an interesting field in which nothing is ever how we want it to be, just like I understand my Mandarin textbook but get lost when I hear the same phrase from a native speaker in rural China. I memorize the most important physical laws, but then they suddenly are not quite right when I am in the laboratory. I have come to really appreciate that uncertainty and the resourcefulness that it creates. Studying engineering has forced me to become less of a perfectionist but more perseverant, which I have found really helpful outside of classes, too.

If you also think being an "arregladora" or "inventora" is really cool, you should check out the engineering school!

Sharpen your pencil and take out a notepad because in the next few minutes I am going to divulge the secret formula every Princeton student utilizes to help them make the most out of their college experience.

1) Originality is your legacy.

Originality doesn’t always come in the form of a novel idea or an earth-shattering revelation. Sometimes, it is neither tangible nor intended for the public eye. Originality is a magical concoction that brands your experiences as your own. It goes from the path you take to class to the choices you make for your senior thesis. Stop comparing your trail to the trails of your peers. Stop worrying about whether or not you’re living up to people’s expectations.

2) You can’t have it all.

I came to Princeton with the ambitions of a naïve first-year student, wanting to go to all the guest lectures, sponsored study breaks, supplementary classes and more. But that simply wasn’t feasible. I had to divorce myself from the high school mindset that I could do it all. Be aware that Princeton offers you more than you can ever dream of taking on. 

3) Take act one and two with a grain of salt. Stop seeking advice from people who tell you how to make the most out of your Princeton career.  

Here is the final and most important key: there is no secret ingredient. Four years. People always say that’s all you have. Yet, 36 academic months, 144 weeks, 1008 days…that’s still quite a lot whichever way you put it. Everyone around you is telling you to make the most out of your Princeton career but why is no one telling you how?

The fact is that no one knows and no one should know. There is no “most” in experience. Trying to quantify it is meaningless. Time is fickle. Some people become lost, trying to figure it all out. Too aware of time? You stay stuck in the past, nostalgic for the old days and resentful that it’s all going too fast. Too ignorant of time? You neglect that it’s there and end up standing with a diploma and a million things you haven’t done. My advice? Forget about navigating time. It only serves to complicate. Besides, this is your story. Your plot. Your set of characters. And if you don’t start filling the pages, who will?

One of the top things to do before graduation is to take a trip with a class or club. I’ve known people who have traveled over breaks to South Africa or London to sing or to Venice or China to research. During this past intersession, the period between fall and spring semester, I went to Paris with L’Avant-Scène, the French theater group on campus. We perform plays in French from the traditional French repertoire such as Molière, Feydeau and new classics like Wajdi Mouawad and Jean-Luc Lagarce.

Florent Masse, the French professor in charge of this troupe, has been taking newcomers to the troupe to Paris since 2004. Normally, there are about five or six people on this trip, but this year there were only three of us. So, we invited a few students studying abroad in Paris to join us at some of our activities. The schedule for the week consisted of drama instruction, activities for cultural enrichment and a play every night.

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We spent some time walking around Paris, visiting the Louvre and enjoying macarons, hot chocolate and crêpes. Most of our days, however, were spent at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD). There, we interacted with aspiring thespians and famous professors who helped us delve more deeply into our work. We had the pleasure of participating in a 3-hour dance class and several other theater classes that focused on character development and movement on stage. In the middle of the trip, we were able to watch a class on masks. It was quite an invigorating experience to perform alongside these energetic French actors.

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Every night, we went to plays at some of the best theaters in Paris such as La Comédie Française. We saw a total of eight plays. Our group preferred Molière’s hysterical Les Fourberies de Scapin at La Comédie Française and the heart-wrenching Saigon performed at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe. After the play, we chatted with the actors. We met some stars of French theater: Loic Corbery, Claude Mathieu and even Xavier Gallais. All of them, despite being extremely accomplished and talented, were extremely humble and excited to interact with us and answer our questions.

I could not have made this voyage without the support of Florent Masse and Princeton. It’s often said here that Princeton opens doors. This was certainly true of this week.

"Creative Nonfiction" with John McPhee

On the first day of class, professor McPhee wrote the following sentence on the chalkboard: “There are a million ways to start a story.” And with those words, he started mine.

I am better for having taken professor McPhee’s class: a better writer, a better student, a better observer, a better learner, and most importantly, a better person.

During my senior spring of high school, a Princeton alum and senior editor at TIME emailed me with one piece of advice: "Take John McPhee's class. It's a life changer." Four years have since passed, and I stand by these words wholeheartedly. I will never forget Mondays with McPhee.

"Introduction to Screenwriting: Adaptation" with Christina Lazaridi

I have always been a storyteller. But, before coming to Princeton, I didn’t know what my story would be. In fact, I matriculated as an aspiring fiction writer, only to discover—through courses like this one and John McPhee’s "Creative Nonfiction"—that the stories surrounding me in the real world are far more fascinating.

By taking "Introductory Screenwriting," I learned to probe the human mind to produce art that is reflective and resonant. At the semester’s end, I couldn’t help but hope that this was only the beginning—which is why I’ll be taking “Advanced Screenwriting” with professor Lazaridi this spring.

"Hustles and Hustlers" with Rachael Ferguson

Since childhood, most people are warned to “stay away from bad guys”—but professor Ferguson can’t resist. In fact, she makes a living doing just the opposite. Whether being blindfolded by mobsters in Sicily or shadowing sex workers in NYC, professor Ferguson never errs on the side of normalcy. In “Hustles and Hustlers," she used her rich ethnographic work to unveil the hidden codes of the criminal underworld. Going to lecture was like tuning into the latest episode of my favorite crime show, making this the most entertaining course I’ve taken at Princeton.

"Writing About Science" with Mike Lemonick

This seminar reminded why I fell in love with nonfiction writing. Throughout the semester, I produced pieces on every topic imaginable: from scientifically and aesthetically describing the aurora borealis to interviewing a microbiologist who works at a high-security federal laboratory. "Writing About Science" left me with a passion for unearthing the mysteries of the world around me—the extraordinary in the ordinary.

"Science Fiction" with Alfred Bendixen

When I first stepped into McCosh Hall in the fall of 2014, I had no idea how much I was altering the course of my academic career. Seven semesters later, the man who started off as one of my first Princeton professors is now my senior thesis adviser, and the books we once read in his class now fill the shelves of my dorm room and the pages of my senior thesis.