Before coming to Princeton, I didn’t really know what entrepreneurship was. Surprisingly, the first club that reached out to me during the first-year activities fair was the Entrepreneurship Club. Since then I have discovered a passion for the field and have participated in many entrepreneurial opportunities offered by the University. 

I have been able to learn about entrepreneurship through the courses offered by the Keller Center. In a course called “Creativity, Innovation and Design,” I was able to propose a solution to a major problem affecting college students: time management. My group and I thought of implementing meditation breaks during lectures in order to help with concentration. Another great course is “Foundations of Entrepreneurship,” in which we have weekly guest lectures from leaders in the field. The founder and CEO of Giphy recently came to the class and it was incredible to learn how he began his own venture.

Outside of the classroom, the Keller Center offers opportunities during the summer. I got to travel to Tel Aviv as a marketing intern at a high-tech startup. Believe it or not, I was able to use my liberal arts education to write blog posts and redesign the startup’s website. I lived with a cohort of 20 Princeton students and learned a lot about the Israeli startup culture. What’s amazing is that this summer internship was fully funded by the University!

Other opportunities made available by Princeton was the Tigers Entrepreneurs Conference 2019 in San Francisco. It was an unbelievable experience because I was able to meet with alumni who founded their own startups, as well as visit companies like Google and Salesforce.

I am incredibly grateful to Princeton for letting me discover my passion for entrepreneurship and giving me the tools and skills necessary to pursue the field after I graduate. My message to prospective students is that, while Princeton is known for its liberal arts education, it also excels in entrepreneurship! If you are creative, have innovative ideas, or want to change the world, entrepreneurship might also be for you! 

If you ask anyone on Princeton’s campus what the most daunting Princeton experience is, they’ll probably tell you it’s the senior thesis. Some students look forward to it, others dread it. Once spring rolls around and those thesis deadlines start creeping closer and closer, you start seeing fewer seniors on campus, as many of them are locked away in their rooms or in the library, trying their best to meet their deadlines. No matter the opinion, the thesis ends up getting done, somehow.

Despite it being a shared experience among Princeton seniors, the senior thesis seems like a far-away concept that is often hard to understand as a non-senior. During my junior year, my department⁠—the Woodrow Wilson School⁠ of Public and International Affairs—hosted a few information sessions about the upcoming thesis, but I remember leaving the meetings wholly unsatisfied and with lingering questions. How was I supposed to fit all that research into a couple of months?

Finally, I went to an information session about funding for thesis research. There, I learned that students in the Woodrow Wilson School have the opportunity to receive funding for their thesis research after filling out an extensive application. Among other things, the application includes a description of your thesis project and research, as well as an itemized list of your anticipated expenses.

At first, I was worried because there were so many students at that information session. How would there be enough funding for everybody? However, after speaking with seniors at the time, I quickly learned that most students do not start their research until they get back on campus. With this in mind, I submitted an application and was excited to learn that I had gotten the money I asked for!

Thanks to the Woodrow Wilson School and its funding program, I was able to complete my senior thesis research in Norway during the summer. The purpose of my trip was to visit Halden Prison, a maximum-security men’s prison in southern Norway, in order to learn about the Norwegian prison system and compare it to the American prison system. While there, I spent a day with the warden, learning about the culture of the prison and touring the entire facility. I also spent a day interviewing guards and incarcerated individuals.

Image

Of course, my trip wasn’t only educational! I also found time to get away and do three incredible hikes⁠—Preikestolen, Kjeragbolten, and Trolltunga⁠—and eat amazing food.

Image

Image

My time in Norway was extremely valuable, and I am excited to continue my thesis research on campus!

During the summer, I was lucky enough to intern at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in downtown Manhattan, working in their National Political Advocacy Department on the Campaign for Smart Justice. Through the Campaign, I worked on projects with the overarching theme of eliminating mass incarceration and racial injustice in the American criminal legal system. I’m incredibly grateful for the experience, as it was a summer of learning and growing for me in so many ways.

First, I was able to continue expanding my knowledge about law, politics, policy and the interaction between them. I used the skills I’ve been developing at Princeton through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs⁠—knowledge accrued from various classes⁠—and applied them to the projects I was working on at the ACLU. Being able to see the real-world applications of the concepts I have learned in class was amazing; it made my work that much more meaningful. Additionally, knowing that I was contributing to extremely important projects was incredible. For example, I contributed to the ACLU’s work on clemency by putting together a memorandum that analyzed each state’s past and present policies on the matter. I then used the information to figure out which states the ACLU should focus on for their own clemency initiatives. I’m grateful to have contributed to such a monumental cause.

Second, I had the opportunity to compare my experience at the ACLU with my internship last summer. Last summer, I worked at the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) in their Immigrant Protection Unit (IPU). Although NYLAG and the ACLU are both non-profit organizations, I had vastly different experiences at both organizations. While I was working in direct services at NYLAG, I had my own clients and ran my own meetings; I was doing more big-picture work at the ACLU this summer. I was able to meet and talk with many influential individuals in today’s political scene. I even had the opportunity to video-conference with Edward Snowden.

Image

Third, I received funding from Princeton for my internship at the ACLU, since the internship was unpaid. Because of Princeton’s generosity, I was able to afford rent at a beautiful apartment in Manhattan. While working at NYLAG last summer, my commute was an hour and a half to and from work each day. Living in Manhattan made my commute much more manageable, and it provided me with a community I had never had access to before. All of a sudden, I was surrounded by other college students interning in the same city and having similar experiences. I was able to participate in more after-hours work functions, which facilitated closer relationships with my coworkers. Finally, I experienced living on my own in a setting that wasn’t a college dorm. I paid rent for the first time, went on weekly grocery store runs, cooked every day and got to know a new area.

Image

My experience at the ACLU went above and beyond anything I could have ever imagined, and it reinforced my interest in law, politics and policy. I am grateful for my time at the organization, and I’m looking forward to following the ACLU’s accomplishments in the years to come!

My work in the Politics department here at Princeton took on a whole new dimension during the summer. From early June to mid-August, I worked in a congressional representative’s office in the House of Representatives. I applied for the internship for perhaps obvious reasons: I was looking to get a first-hand look at the different government institutions I’ve only really read about in textbooks and newspaper articles. And, without a shadow of a doubt, my summer experience delivered!

Before starting, I wasn’t sure what to expect either from my work in the office or my life outside it. Looking back, I don’t know that I could quickly summarize the litany of different experiences and challenges I experienced at work or on my own time as I, at times. struggled to navigate life in the city. Each day I spent interning was wildly different, and invited valuable reflection on how I can best harness the top-rate education I’m getting on campus for good.

At work, I did everything from giving tours of the Capitol to writing memoranda on various bills for the Congressman to read. Some days I spent mostly at my desk, typing away and answering phone calls, while others were spent running around the halls of the House and Senate office buildings delivering notes and messages for and from higher-ranking staffers. From the very first morning of my internship, when I was tasked with combing through a 200-page budget document, staff treated me as an integral part of the office. In-between tasks, I listened to members of Congress speak as part of the Intern Lecture Series and tried my best to explore all the different nooks and crannies of the Capitol building.

Perhaps even more valuable than the actual work experience I gained were the insights I gleaned from my conversations with coworkers and Princeton alumni as part of the Princeton in Washington program (PiW). The staffers in my office had a range of different educational and professional backgrounds, and were generous with their time in speaking to interns about life on the Hill and speaking about broader career advice. The Princeton in Washington program, which connects Princeton alumni, families and current students living in the capitol region, hosted a wide variety of educational events with high-profile alumni. The roster of alumni speakers, including sitting Senators, members of the House, and high-ranking government and private-sector officials, offered a window into a variety of different Washington career paths and ways to succeed.

I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to undertake such a life-changing experience, and even more so for the global Princeton community which offered me an incredible network of support even as I was working 200 miles away from campus. Who knows yet if I’ll be back next summer, but I love knowing that the Tiger family will follow me wherever I choose to go.

Over the summer, I participated in Princeton’s Summer Programming Experience (SPE). The program consisted of six weeks spent in the Friend Center computer labs, where we worked in teams of two or three on a programming project of our choice. Each team was supervised by a faculty member or a graduate student from the Computer Science department. 

The Summer Programming Experience is targeted at first-year students or sophomores with minimal programming backgrounds. Since it is often the first exposure many of us have with a significant programming project, guidance was offered if we asked for it. However, we mostly had to teach ourselves the tools we needed to complete the project we had in mind — from familiarizing ourselves with the basics of a new programming language, to making design decisions at every juncture of the project — decisions that I had never made before in a classroom environment. Like many other experiences at Princeton, I quickly learned that my greatest takeaway from SPE was the power to teach myself more.

Our team of three made a 2-dimensional platform game called “RADish”. Everything was coded from scratch, from how the many dynamic components in the game collided with one another, to the variety of power-ups to be collected and enemies to overcome, as well as the user interface and special effects. Many hilarious incidents ensued when a typo in the map input resulted in a labyrinth of pixels that was impossible for our poor protagonist to navigate! Over hours huddled together trying to locate the source of bugs or inefficiencies, we grew close as a team. Sometimes, we would leave motivating comments or inside jokes for each other in the source code we shared.

At the end of the program, each group shared their project. One group made a phone application to connect students on campus who wanted to study together for a specific class. Another made a program that simulated evolution. Another group programmed a remote controlled car that could play hide and seek with the user. It was incredible to see how each team managed to take their ideas from a brainstorm to actual implementations within such a short window of time. 

Overall, SPE was a rewarding experience. It was filled with the challenges of working on a project of a large scale for the first time, but flexible enough to allow us to develop our projects at our own paces and according to our capabilities.

This past summer, I completed an internship at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I applied for and accepted the internship through a program at Princeton, Princeton Internships in Civic Service, which provides students funding to complete otherwise unpaid internships in the public service sector. During my two months at the HSUS, I worked in the Public Relations department, and gained a treasure trove of valuable experience that will hopefully translate to positions I take in the future.

I’ve always been a big animal lover, so working at the Humane Society of the United States—whose central aim is to make the country a safer, more humane place for animals to coexist with humans—was a natural fit. My day-to-day work consisted largely of drafting press releases and emails, researching and interfacing with reporters, tracking news coverage of the organization and writing tweets for the HSUS Public Relations Twitter account. 

However, every single day in the office was different! There were always a bevy of miscellaneous projects I could help work on if I’d already completed my daily tasks, and across departments people were always happy to have help from an intern. There were also many dedicated intern events at the office, which served as opportunities both to learn more about the larger HSUS organization and to meet interns who worked in different fields or areas of the building. On multiple occasions, we didn’t even report to the office for work; instead, we got to travel around the D.C. area and participate in experimental food tastings (the future of college cafeterias is bright!) and professional development trainings. 

One of the coolest things I did during my experience at the HSUS was participating in my first Animal Rescue Team mission. One rainy weekend, my coworkers and I traveled to a small airport in Virginia where we helped unload approximately 100 animals off a plane they’d been loaded onto in Mississippi, where they were rescued from a severe domestic cruelty situation. Helping the animals off the plane and then sending them off to their future shelter homes (and, hopefully, forever homes after that!) was such a gratifying experience and alone would have made the internship worthwhile. 

Image

Prior to my work with the Humane Society of the United States, I’d not had any hands-on experience with the nonprofit sector or its inner workings. My summer in Gaithersburg, though, demonstrated to me not only valuable professional skills but also the immensely commendable physical, mental and emotional effort that goes into working for a better world.

Coming back from the summer is always an adjustment, but an exciting time nonetheless. One of the more fun parts of returning to Old Nassau is hearing about all the incredible things friends have done during the summer months. It is also a great chance to hear more about the experiences offered to undergraduates here. In fact, that is what led me to how I spent my summer.

After hearing about some of my upperclassmen friends discuss their experiences, I ended up pursuing the Martin A. Dale ’53 Summer Award. Every year, the Office of the Dean of the College selects 12-15 sophomore applicants to spend the summer working on their proposed projects. The unique aspect of the award is that all of the proposed projects must be non-academic and focused on self-growth. By accepting the award, students are encouraged to take at least eight weeks away from the rigorous sphere of academia and structured internships to interact with the world in various ways and make space for self-reflection.

Some of the successful projects this year include a friend of mine working to gain his family’s citizenship of the Cherokee nation, reaching the summit of Mt. Denali in Alaska and exploring what queer parenting looks like around the globe. My project was focused on exploring the cuisine of the French-African diaspora. Coming from an African American background, food has long been a way for me to understand my family’s history. With my six years of French education, I went off to explore how other groups relate their food to their cultural cuisine.

I learned that the Martiniquais cuisine carried heavily elements of traditional French cooking such as the use of creams and meats. However, some key differences I noticed was the heavy reliance upon seafood, use of seasonings and incorporating side dishes. Moroccan food had similar differences, but with a greater usage of non-bovine livestock as opposed to seafood. Meanwhile, traditional French food capitalizes on France's plentiful grazing space to embrace cuts of beef and foul in the cuisine. 

The project took me to Martinique, the South of France and Morocco. All throughout, I ate some incredible foods- learning a multitude of family recipes, spoke with a variety of individuals about identity and engaged in some incredible personal reflection. At the end of my summer, I was left grappling with questions on patriotism and racial identity and a plethora of memories.

Princeton offers an inordinate amount of summer opportunities to us undergraduates, often with opportunities for funding to reduce financial hardship. But, this awards embodies a special part of the Princeton community, an emphasis on growing together and encouragement to have new experiences.

Working as a tour guide, I’ve had the opportunity to spend much of this summer living on campus at Princeton University. This has been, generally speaking, an enjoyable experience, but there are some important ways in which life at Princeton during the school year differs from life at Princeton over the summer. Most noticeably, the campus is fairly devoid of Princeton students themselves, with the exception of those conducting research or working a campus job. Princeton does not offer any summer classes, so most students take the opportunity to spend the summer pursuing internships and other programs across the globe. However, many visitors travel to campus to attend our information sessions and tours.

Summers at Princeton have allowed me to develop a renewed appreciation for the campus. Without classes, work or extracurricular activities to manage, I’ve been able to dedicate additional time to enjoying the peaceful beauty of Princeton’s lovely buildings and outdoor spaces. A weekend trip to, in my opinion, the unpleasantly loud and bustling New York City helped remind me how much I value living and studying in a place as quiet and serene as Princeton, while not being completely in the middle of nowhere. Exercising at Dillon Gym has also been a nice change of pace.

Not everything is so rosy, however. Having grown up in Florida, I assumed that summer temperatures up North would be easily manageable. I was punished for my hubris, quickly discovering that the New Jersey summer gave Florida a run for its money with its heat and humidity. One heat wave in early July produced “feels-like” temperatures well above 100 degrees and sent me fleeing from my non-air-conditioned room in search of a building with air-conditioning. Summer is also, understandably, the time in which much construction and renovation takes place, with iconic Princeton structures such as Blair Arch and Nassau Hall, among others, undergoing significant construction. Hopefully, this will show visitors that Princeton works hard to keep its buildings from falling into disrepair. Finally, the inability to eat all my meals in a dining hall during the summer has made procuring food more difficult. But Wawa, a convenience store with food options on campus, fortunately offers a summer sale on hoagies that has produced some savings, given the probably-unhealthy number of said hoagies I have consumed.

Soon, however, the Wawa hoagie sale will come to an end and Princeton students will reconvene on campus from all over the world. While spending the summer on campus has been a generally positive experience, I still eagerly await the fall. As much as I love the campus itself, the community of students is what really makes Princeton a special place.

I’ve found my summer home in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

During these months, I have two jobs. One is my internship in Thailand with a grassroots organization for Burmese migrants, and the other is my remote job for the Mapping Expatriate Paris project with the Center for Digital Humanities at Princeton. I’ve quite enjoyed life as a digital nomad. On the weekends, I bunker down at various bubble tea internet cafes to work on my Digital Humanities Project and to do research for my senior thesis.

Image

Both of these activities require access to the Princeton online network to download articles from virtual Princeton libraries or to look at the Digital Humanities archives.

The way that this happens? The Princeton VPN. I can do my research and work anywhere in the world and still have access to all of Princeton’s resources. Virtual access to Princeton libraries overseas is a huge deal. If you’re not convinced, try to find high quality articles on Old Norse sagas and archaeological records on Google! I need specific research articles for my senior thesis to get started while I’m traveling.

Because of the VPN, I’m able to participate in two incredible projects and prepare for my senior year. My summer is thus filled with hours at my grassroots organization, temples, Thai and Burmese language lessons, hiking, bubble tea addictions and brief periods where I step into the virtual Princeton library and lose myself in my research.

One of my favorite times of the year is when it is time to decide what to do with my summer months. I jump from website to website imagining myself all over the world pursuing different programs! I come from a different educational system where summers are not meant to be "productive," and I was used to relaxing by the beach for the past 18 summers. As a first year student, I was extremely excited to see all the places Princeton could take me during those three long summer months.

Unable to pick just one program to participate in among the many Princeton summer offerings, after my first year, I decided to attend two Princeton language programs. I was fortunate enough to spend a month in Munich learning German followed by two months in Beijing learning Mandarin. These programs are just two examples of the many intensive language programs the University offers in places all around the world such as Spain, Argentina, France, Japan, Russia, Brazil and Tanzania. They normally offer intermediate and advanced language classes while also including a variety of cultural activities so that we can better understand and explore the country. Many of them are also "total immersion" programs which means that during the duration of the program, the students can only speak the language they are learning. This, of course, can be really challenging but also a lot of fun! People develop different personality traits and senses of humor when speaking in a foreign language so it is a great way to meet new people or further develop existing friendships in a completely different context to Princeton’s campus.

Image

Image

My experiences participating in both programs were great and also very different from one another. Princeton in Munich was just one month, and German is an easier language to learn in a more casual context. We had three hours of language class per day at the Goethe Institut in Munich and then spent a lot of time just exploring the city and other places in Bavaria. On the other hand, Princeton in Beijing is jokingly referred to as "Prison in Beijing" because there is a lot of work during the whole two months of the program’s duration. On top of the four hours of morning class, each student has a one-hour individual tutorial session in the afternoon, daily quizzes and weekly exams. While it is a lot of work, I found the program extremely rewarding because it helped me greatly improve my Mandarin in a short period of time while being in constant contact with awesome Chinese instructors. During the weekends we also had time to explore Beijing, which is a wonderful and incredibly historically rich city. It was great to have the opportunity to experience the country that we were learning about first-hand. If you are interested in learning a new language, these immersion programs might be a great option for the summer.

Image

Image