Dear Freshman,

Welcome to Princeton. You go here now! Remember to feel good about it, and yourself, every once in a while.

Princeton can often be an intimidating place. Everyone is so goddamn smart and interesting, right?! It is understandably very easy to develop feelings of inadequacy.

I mean, look at yourself. You’re probably a virgin. You haven’t competed in the Olympics. You’ve never started a company. You might not even have been born in a foreign country. You’re pathetic! How is a nobody like you expected to succeed at a place like this? Where the hell do you fit in?

If you asked Anthropology, it would probably say that the best way to assimilate to a new culture is to participate in that place’s traditions. Lucky for you, at an old-ass institution like Princeton there are ass loads of traditions to learn about and latch onto.

Traditions can sometimes be embarrassing. Sometimes, dangerous. And sometimes they even go against your most fundamental moral beliefs. But tradition is tradition and you want to belong don’t you?

We here at the Nass have tried to make life a little bit easier for you by compiling a comprehensive list of the 100 accomplishments that will most reliably lead you to a successful Princeton career. Ask the Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors above you and they will surely confirm that nobody graduates Princeton without having done at least half of the things on the following list.

We’re not saying you have to, but if you don’t, you will not only be letting yourself down, you’ll be letting down generations of great Princetonians before you.

Read closely. Some of these will be more difficult to achieve than others, but all are equally common and essential components of the Princeton experience. Get started today!

Love,

your Elders, your friends,

the Eds

1. Shirley Tilghman and Christopher Eisgruber, at the same time.
2. Join a frat!
3. Pregame precept.
4. Pregame Murray-Dodge cookies.
5. Pregame petting the cat that lives in Prospect Garden.
6. Get rabies from the cat that lives in Prospect Garden.
7. Throw a room party so dope going to the street doesn’t even get mentioned.
8. Make a drunken pass at a McCosh nurse.
9. Lean forward from the back seat of a public safety vehicle and vomit on the officer.
10. Play off your alcoholism as enjoying your college years.
11. Try anal beads.
12. Submit a verbatim.
13. Read the Prince without losing faith in humanity.
14. P/D/F a course and get a C-.
15. Lose an intramural match to a team of undercover athletes.
16. Walk the Forbes golf course at night and observe the twinkling firmament.
17. Think that you can productively study in bed. Fall asleep immediately.
18. Eat alone with dignity.
19. Treat a grad student like a human person.
20. Get mono. And gastro.
21. Make out with a Panera employee (see gastro).
22. Have sex with your RCA and taste that forbidden fruit.
23. Have sex in McCosh 50.
24. Have sex in McCosh 50 when there isn’t a class in session.
25. Have sex.
26. Gain exemption from distribution requirements by Direct Presidential Appeal.
27. Forget everyone you meet’s name at least once (and if you can’t, pretend to).
28. Misuse machines at Dillon.
29. Spend all the money you saved with Financial Aid at the U-Store.
30. Wade into the Scudder Plaza fountain.
31. Learn that the Woody Woo courtyard is called Scudder Plaza.
32. Drunkenly hook-up with a squirrel.
33. Dress up in a janitor’s outfit and solve math problems that get left on chalkboards in Fine.
34. Climb a ladder and watch a naked sorority pillow fight through a window.
35. Write your thesis freshman year and then hang out.
36. Collect all of the free clothing you possibly can.
37. Donate it and supply an entire impoverished nation with warmth.
38. Flirt with Domingo to try to get into TI.
39. Be female, and flirt with Domingo to try to get into TI.
40. Order an entire Frist pizza after the street.
41. See people on their first date at Frist pizza after the street.
42. Ironically bicker Cottage dressed in an American Flag print sweatsuit.
43. Photobomb groups of Asian tourists.
44. Host an SAE – Koleinu mixer.
45. Trade passes for Late Meal swipes.
46. Toke with your preceptor.
47. Discover how uncomfortably moist the walls are in Cannon.
48. See people having sex on new jersey transit at 10 am.
49. “Do your homework tomorrow morning.”
50. Get haunted by John Nash.
51. Catch cold on the walk back from State Night.
52. Get a job at the Frist welcome desk to promote diversity.
53. . Get asked if you’re pregnant at McCosh.
54. Get asked if you were impregnated in McCosh 50.
55. See Jeff Nunokawa wear sleeves.
56. Stay in to study and stay up longer than you would have had you gone out.
57. Belt out your first solo at an arch sing.
58. Receive dirty looks from the singers who are actually in the group
59. Get sloppy while looking fancy.
60. Rollerblade through the middle of a basketball game against Harvard naked.
61. Go to a Princeton football tailgate and actually watch the game afterwards.
62. Drink 2 beers per hour on Newman’s Day.
63. Paint a pair of balls onto the base of Cannon’s cannon.
64. Get exposed to on the towpath.
65. Hand in 100 blank pages as your senior thesis and convince your advisor that you just used invisible ink.
66. Walk the wrong way leaving the street and try to prox into a residential building.
67. Try out for performing arts groups who claim that no experience is necessary and discover seven auditions later that experience was necessary.
68. Blame grade deflation for your academic shortcomings but secretly suspect you could be working harder.
69. Play hide and go seek in Firestone.
70. Hoard Snapples from Late Meal.
71. Accidentally reply-all on a Listserv.
72. Wipe out on a long board and pretend nobody saw.
73. Sleep until 9 but stay in bed until 10. 
74. Forget a towel to the shower and dry yourself with paper towels.
75. Give someone playing piano in Frist a stern talking to.
76. Murder someone playing piano in Frist after they completely disregard you and continue playing.
77. Receive a hearty round of applause from everyone else in Frist who can study in peace now that the asshole on the piano has been wiped off the face of the earth.
78. Break into former study rooms and reappropriate them as common spaces.
79. Claim squatters rights when the people who live there now ask you to leave.
80. Walk around Firestone c-floor wearing heels.
81. Get through the late meal line faster than your friends and sit alone waiting for them for fifteen minutes slowly nibbling all the rice off your sushi.
82. Complain about the college hook-up culture to someone.  Then hook up with them.
83. Drunk e-mail a professor.
84. Love anal beads.
85. Study what you love.
86. Make fun of tour groups because statistically less than one in ten of them will get into Princeton.
87. Take a foreign language so you can use it on the Street.
88. Go to Saint A’s rush parties but don’t look eager or anything.
89. Longingly stare into the Rock Magnetism Lab.
90. Fall in Love (Wit a Stripper).
91. Get that stupid look off your face.
92. Do the Prospect 11 with absinthe.
93. Get caught putting unused condoms back into the envelope outside your RCA’s door. Cry about your nonexistent sex life.
94. Get caught putting used condoms back into the envelope outside your RCA’s door. High five whoever catches you.
95. Become close friends with someone you never would have talked to in high school.
96. Stay in touch with your OA friends. They knew you before you did.
97. Stay in touch with your high school friends so you know how awesome you’re becoming.
98. Live a healthy lifestyle, making sure to eat and sleep regularly.
99. Witness a “pithy remark” arms race on the Nassau Weekly listserv. (Maybe even contribute!)
100. Be proud of your alma mater. It’s all you’ve got.