One of the first classes I took at Princeton was a freshman seminar called “Ethics in Finance.” Taking the class was one of the best decisions I made at Princeton.

I learned about ethics in the financial industry by analyzing case studies and past scandals. The professor really cared about us, and I was able to form a meaningful bond with him. I also grew close to my classmates; because it was a seminar, there were only 15 students. Through this seminar, I learned how to participate and contribute to class conversations. It made me question my own morals and think about the ethics behind my career choice.

The highlight of the seminar was our trip to New York City. We visited Acumen, an impact investment firm, and Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Ronald Regan administration. The trip was an amazing experience as we got to meet people at the forefront of the financial industry, and we ended the day with a nice dinner at one of my professor’s favorite restaurants.

Taking a freshman seminar was one of the highlights of my first year at Princeton. I got to meet other first-year students and travel to NYC. I encourage prospective students to visit the Program of Freshman Seminars website and learn about one of the many ways Princeton helps us in the transition to college level course work.

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I still remember the day my roommates and I moved into our quad our first year here, with bustling containers filled to the brim with clothes and supplies and frothy introductions in voices two octaves too high. I had already spent three nights in our room because International Orientation (IO) had started a few days before regular Orientation (a blur that was no match for jetlag).

My first weeks here were strung together by the theme of being lost but not wanting to pull out the color-coded map Princeton kindly provided for fear of appearing like (gasp) a first-year. Also memorable was the constant flux of confusion present in any audience when I told them my name in introduction.

“How do you spell that?”, they’d ask, politely.

“Zet, Ee, X-…”

“…Zet?”

It took a few weeks to extract stray weeds of Malaysian slang from my English. The International Orientation leaders had warned us of the American tendency to ask “how are you?” before walking off just as you conjure up a good summary of your day. (I’ll keep you updated on whether I ever respond to “what’s up?” with anything but “…the ceiling?”).

I’m sure there must have been a time when I doubted if I would ever feel like this campus had a place for me, too — but that time is as long gone as the color-coded map I once stole looks at when I thought no one was looking. There’s hardly room for feeling like you don’t belong when you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with an assignment partner in the trenches of a problem set, or in the cavern of bugs present in code written too late at night.

When I look back on my first year here, all I see is awkward small talk quickly dissolving into a chorus of Disney songs managed while juggling balloons, trips to New York stolen between papers, and study breaks spent arguing over what a biscuit should look like.

(A biscuit is nearly exactly like a cookie.)

Alice fell down a rabbit hole to get into Wonderland. Dorothy rode a tornado to Oz. I took a Writing Seminar to discover the world of academia. When you think about it, we share the same journey: an innocent protagonist (that would be me) is transported to a strange land where excitement, adventures and danger await and, eventually, returns to the real world relatively unscathed and hopefully wiser.

I took my Writing Seminar, or Writing Sem as we call it, in the spring of my first year, which gave me ample opportunity to hear the entire range of praises sung and groans issued by my peers who took it in the fall. When it came time for my first seminar meeting, I collected the required materials, printed out the readings and entered with both hope and misgiving.

As it turned out, I enjoyed the class greatly. The instructor was captivating, commuted in from New York twice a week and he taught an equally captivating class with great enthusiasm for the material. Through conferences with him and my classmates, chalkboard dissections of various arguments and positions and fruitful harvests of academic articles to challenge and defend, I developed the skills needed to engage in scholarly work. If you’ll permit one more reference to children’s literature, consider the Pevensie children, who were transported by wardrobe to the snowy country of Narnia. In the middle of their adventure, they are met by Father Christmas, who presents them with personal gifts to aid them in their journey. Like Father Christmas, my Writing Sem provided me with tools -- tools I needed to thrive as a new university student beginning to engage with the voluminous and curious world of academia.

While I have learned more about academic writing since taking the course, Writing Sem set the foundation for my written work at Princeton. Coming to the University, I didn’t expect to feel comfortable writing about Locke’s view of the wage-labor relationship (for Writing Sem), defenses of pacifism (an ethics course) and the American executive branch as a policy maker (a politics course), but I have done all of those things now. And more than that, I’ve enjoyed them, too.

One of the most common questions I get asked is, "What made you choose Princeton?" and the answer isn't as simple for me as it is for some.

“Where have you found your community this year?”

Princeton's student housing organization sent out a survey posing this question. I answered in the typical fashion: activities, my co-op, my classes, the friends in my major, etc. Oh, and the bathroom.

For the first two years at Princeton, I enjoyed a private bathroom with my roommate. We reveled in our privacy and often boasted about our private bathroom status. We didn’t want to even think about fighting over showers or wearing shower sandals. At the end of sophomore year, I was accepted into the Edwards Collective, a residential community on campus for those interested in the arts and humanities. I was ecstatic and was only concerned about one thing: a public bathroom. To my surprise, shower sandals aren’t so bad. And I only rarely had to wait to hop in the shower. The horror stories my other friends told didn’t match my experience at all. In fact, some of the best parts of my day were spent there.

The secret? My hallmates were chatty in the bathroom. As we brushed our teeth or washed our faces, we’d swap stories about our days. I looked forward to hearing more about the progression of someone’s senior thesis or seeing new videos of a dance routine. With a few of my hallmates, it was a time to practice my German and discuss deep ecology. With everyone, it was a time of encouragement and sympathy. During finals, every exchange ended with wishes of good luck and gentle admonishments to get some more sleep and to take care of oneself.

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Many first-year students want singles and private bathrooms. In my opinion, this mentality reflects how some students first think about success. Upon arrival, you may want to isolate yourself and only focus on your studies. Over time, you start to realize that your success isn’t dependent on others’ failures. In fact, connecting with other people and hearing about their passions is a great way to deepen your education.

So, even those late night talks in robes and sweatpants have value. They’re an integral part of the Princeton experience, and a pleasant reminder that you belong.

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?

After shopping for some classes my first-year fall, I decided to add “Chinese Politics” to my very standard engineering curriculum. Although physics, math, a writing seminar, Mandarin and Chinese politics can sound like an unusual combination, that first semester really started a trend for me.  Ever since then my semesters have been, for the most part, a similar combination of mechanical and aerospace engineering and East Asian studies classes. Although, two years ago, I would have not imagined myself following two academic interests so different from one another, I am now used to switching between writing an essay about Zheng He’s expeditions in the 15th century and doing my space flight problem set in the same evening.

I actually did not come into Princeton knowing that I would like to pursue a humanities certificate along with my engineering major. However, after sitting in on my first “Chinese Politics” lecture, with it explaining so much of my own experience in China during Bridge Year, I realized that it was important for me to also explore other personal interests in an academic setting. Since then I have not only taken language, history, comparative literature and politics courses in the East Asian Studies Department, but I have also been able to further explore my interest in China’s political reality by working as a research analyst with Prof. Truex in the Department of Politics. It is exciting for me to see how I quietly sat in on that first “Chinese Politics” class two years ago amazed at how little I knew, and how I now write scripts for a YouTube Channel to empower public discourse on Chinese politics as part of an initiative through the National Committee on U.S. - China relations. I still find myself lost often as I try to write scripts on whether China is still communist, or what the latest Party Congress can tell us about the future of the Chinese Communist Party. But I know that being lost, confused and outside of my comfort zone is part of the learning process that can make such different interests compatible. Now, I just need to convince my “China’s Frontiers” professor that space exploration has a lot to do with frontier expansion!

It was the end of frosh week, which is the first week of the academic year where student organizations will have open houses to gain interest from students, and I knew the auditions had started at 7 p.m. I really wanted to go but my first-year self was not even sure of how to get to that dance studio and still needed a bit more confidence to show up alone to the auditions of a South Asian dance company. I went instead to the Triangle Show with some friends I had just met, but during the performance I kept thinking how sad it would be not to join such a cool dance group just because of my frosh week shyness. When the show ended I convinced one of the friends to run over to the rest of the auditions with me. When we arrived they just finished learning the classical piece for auditions. They were going to perform it in groups and then we would learn a Bollywood piece. My friend and I watched as the auditionees performed the classical choreography they had just learnt. I became both scared and excited, the choreography was so beautiful yet so different to anything I had danced before, it was indeed difficult! But once they filmed all the auditionees, the company members stood up and performed the Bollywood section we would be learning—Balam Pichkari! The fear immediately went away and the excitement multiplied; this is why I had wanted to auditions! That same night I received an email inviting me to callbacks, and the day after I was suddenly part of a crazy, welcoming student-run dance company called Naacho. 

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People on campus often ask me how I ended up joining a South Asian dance group and being so involved in it. The short answer is my roommate in high school was from India and she taught me some Bollywood choreographies, and I thought they were a lot of fun. The longer answer also includes how I have been trained in flamenco my whole life and the dance styles are similiar. This is due to the Roma ethnic group that developed the flamenco dance form in Southern Spain, which originated from India. Bollywood was the only South East Asian dance style to which I had been exposed but, through Naacho I have also learnt Raas, Bhangra, Hip-hop, classical and many more styles. Naacho late night rehearsals have been some of my favorite moments on campus and the weeks preceding the shows have been the most packed weeks in my whole time at Princeton. The “Naacho bonding nights” are the main reason I have not been able to get enough sleep.

Being in Naacho has been incredibly fun and it has also allowed me to better understand and reflect on the world around me, which has in turn helped me to better understand the Princeton community and the ways in which we can make it grow. Being the co-president of such a diverse dance company with dancers that come from all over the world, and which presents a wide variety of traditional and contemporary South Asian dance styles, is really an amazing privilege. Working with more than 40 students and leading a dance company that promotes the beauty of South Asian dance has been a very gratifying experience, but it is also a never-ending learning process. It takes time to understand how one can appreciate other cultures, and aim to do a just representation of often underrepresented communities to which one does not necessarily belong. While Naacho seems like an obvious choice to many of our dancers of South Asian descent, it becomes home for all the company, including people who had no previous exposure to South Asian culture. The student groups at Princeton are really a great way of exposing oneself to new cultures, communities and ideas. It is hard to figure out your identity in a new environment, but the process will help you grow in so many ways. I hope to see you all at auditions in the future!

When you first get to Princeton you are inundated with acronyms. Don’t forget to listen to your RCA and PAA’s advice. Did you go to the SHARE panel? What about the ODUS discussion? Did you ask OIT for help with wireless connection? Do you have a JRC?

There are so many names and positions that it’s hard to keep them straight. That’s why I wanted to focus on one of these acronyms so that hopefully you as a reader can gain a better appreciate for what it is other than a few letters smashed together in a phonetically appeasing way.

PAA – Peer Academic Adviser.

A PAA works closely with an RCA (residential college adviser) to mentor a group of first-year or sophomore students. PAAs are typically juniors and seniors who have volunteered their time to offer advice and guidance to younger students. While PAAs often focus mostly on the academic side of things (hence the name), that doesn’t mean they are limited to the academic realm.

I serve as a PAA for a group of first year students in Mathey College, one of our six residential colleges. Since my primary role is to provide academic guidance for my "zees" (what we call our group of students, since they are our advisees), I often find myself at meals with them discussing classes for the following semester or what major to consider. As a first-year, I took advantage of this resource and constantly went to my PAA for advice, so now it is my chance to give back to the community that helped me so much. In addition to academic advising, I also work closely with my RCA to host fun study breaks for my zees. This year, we’ve held a Halloween makeup design workshop, a summer application and resume workshop and many fun weekly study breaks featuring some kind of exciting food (Qudoba and sushi are always a hit). We also have a family dinner every Sunday evening in the Mathey dining hall where all of our zees are invited to get a meal together and catch up with one another.

My role as a PAA also extends outside of my zee group. Any time there is a first or second year student interested in ecology and evolutionary biology, my director of studies forwards their information to me. Over coffee or meals, I get to meet other students who are interested in my major and offer them advice regarding curriculum and opportunities within the department.

The PAA system is spectacular and is one of the special aspects of the Princeton experience many visitors do not always learn about. Therefore, I hope this provides an idea of what PAAs do and how great of a resource they are for first- and second-year students.