On Going Away
Just as I started to really enjoy Princeton, I’m going away—for a long time. When I arrived in September, I was a freshman, but not particularly fresh. I’d returned from a gap year that had me doing almost nothing, and certainly nothing that benefited other people particularly (unless you count the two hundred forty Chinese children whom I taught English for a semester—for a decent amount of cash).
by Dan Taub on
Black Musings
I call myself African. Despite being raised in New York, I was born in Ghana and was raised culturally Ghanaian. I understand the language, Twi, though I don’t speak it very well, which people (mostly Ghanaians) point out and make fun of me for.
by Lovia Gyarkye on
Team U and Me
I recently ran a half marathon, which is 13.1 miles. This is the longest distance that I have ever run. I ran cross country and track all throughout high school, and workouts would foray into the ten mile range once in a while, but, as would soon be reinforced, that extra 3.1 is far from negligible. More to the point, the most I had run at once as a collegiate was only a tad over six, and this was nine days before the half marathon. What I am getting at is the following: this half marathon was a significant undertaking for which I was resoundingly underprepared.
by Dayton Martindale on
Capturing Essense
That summer, we set out partially for a family vacation, but also in search for inspiration. The destination was the “west,” or what Dad called “the wild,” far from our oak and pine tree-covered corner of the Northeast. It was my mothers’ idea; she, the architect-turned-artist of the family, decided that in the desolation of the sun-baked clay, she and I would find the subject of a new series of paintings. Setting out in our rented car, we didn’t really know what to expect—would there really be “deserts” and “caverns” like in the westerns, little shacks along the road where old men drank beer and splayed out their feet on the porch, gazing out across dust and childhood dreams?
by You-You Ma on
Dear Susan Patton
I would like to sincerely thank you for coming to campus on Thursday, April 18, 2013 to give a lecture titled, “Advice from a Princeton Mother.” Your lecture helped me a great deal. It helped me to understand exactly what is so dangerous about anti-feminist, slut-shaming women like you, and why the backlash you received after your now infamous letter to the editor in the Daily Princetonian was not only deserved, but important to the future of American women.
by Olivia Lloyd on
Boston
Probably wearing an oversized baseball cap and a big, sloppy grin, at three years old I stepped onto a characteristically purple and yellow car on the Old Colony Line Railroad with my father. The line extends from Boston down to Kingston, my hometown, and Plymouth, where the rock is, both about an hour away from the city. After decades out of service, the line had just been rebuilt, thanks in part to the concrete my dad poured.
by Chris Lombreglia on
Growing Down
Reluctantly back home with my parents two months after deciding to take time off from Princeton, I wasn’t exactly in prime form. My uncontrollably racing mind had left me sleepless for weeks. The process of peeling away the suffocating layers of anxiety accumulated at prep schools and college was proving to be agonizingly slow.
by Lauren Davis on
Giri Nathan
An inability to pronounce one’s name can meddle with one’s self-esteem. Child psychologists might study this some day: take a roomful of first-generation American children and ask them to introduce themselves to one another, then watch them struggle to eke out the syllables on loan from the lands their parents left behind.
by Giri Nathan on
I Wrote A Thesis
I wrote a thesis. I wrote it and bound it and turned it in. I am proud of my thesis and I think I produced a piece of research that is interesting and substantial.
by Rafael Abrahams on
Religion with Friends
We are a little hung-over, a little loud, a little late. As my friend Giri drives the car up a dusty, unpaved road, my friend Louise and I comment on how rustic the rough wooden fence separating from the field from Princeton Friends Meeting is.
by Susannah Sharpless on
Growing Up Quaker
Around sixth or seventh grade I remember discussing religion with a friend. We were in the backseat of her car and her mother, who was driving, politely asked me if I attended any type of Christian services.
by Veronica Nicholson on
1000 Words
1. ‘Cody’ was my friend’s brother and the only one who didn’t gasp as I lowered all seventy pounds of me into the crowded hot tub. “You’re disgusting,” one of the girls said, with awe, my first experience with the appropriation of insulting words as compliments. Later we spun a champagne bottle on the cold basement floor and I landed on him. My hair smelled stale from pool chemicals as it brushed wet against his face. He was my crush that whole year, until he didn’t make it into advanced math and I grinded with another boy at the seventh-grade dance.
by January Canto on