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).
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.
Future Veterans
I found this curious invitation nestled in a medium-sized cardboard box in Mudd Library. A middle-aged man with a likeness to Frank Zappa had wheeled a cart over with this box and three others just like it into the musty reading room where I was conducting my research after hearing that my grandfather, who graduated in 1937, was a part of this group.
On Prospect
Without Greek brothers and sisters to guide us, the class of 2016 is the first to navigate the treacherous seas of passes and lists alone. After a year of stumbling drunkenly around the Street, we feel that the classes of 2015, 2014, and 2013 (and maybe some pre-frosh out there) would appreciate and find humor in our (very biased) insight into the distinct cultures of infamous Princeton Eating Clubs.
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.
David and David
David Foster Wallace is not here. In the absence of a physical body there is an idea, that of two Davids. It’s brought to life by biographer D.T. Max and author Jeffrey Eugenides, sitting in front of a rapt audience in the James Stewart Theater. The concept of two Davids—the sincere, troubled one and the manipulative, self-aggrandizing one—is one that the real men onstage constantly return to.
Each Body
It’s a Thursday night. I’m sitting at my desk, staring at a tormenting problem set, when I hear my door swing open. An eager head pokes in through the doorway. “Yo, Lils,” the head says. “Want to come to a naked party later?”
Bye Bye Blumberg
The first time I saw the band Yuck perform live, I had never heard of them. They were simply the group warming up for Smith Westerns on a Friday night at a hole in the wall in downtown Nashville. I saw their name on the marquee above the venue and thought “Yuck” sounded weird and off-putting. When they took forever to set up on stage, I went from skeptical to hostile: “Who do these guys think they are? They’re just the warm-up act!”
Allegory of the Garden
I had already seen the movie in theaters three times. Enjoyment is one word, obsession is another. The first three times, this film had sent me into hysterics, including, but not limited to impassioned weeping, strings of incoherent syllables, and frenzied gesticulation at the screen. In each of my three previous viewings, the usual suspects (“I Dreamed a Dream,” Fantine’s passing, “When Tomorrow Comes”) were to blame, but during this latest screening at the Garden Theater, the floodgates held fast against their onslaught
Gros-Câlin
If you ask me who my favorite writer is, I’ll probably say Albert Camus, because I love his writing and his ideas and also because his name is recognizable and thus me liking him helps construct a certain image of me. But I am less moved by Camus and the Nobel-prize-crowned glory of his rhetoric than by one more obscure author, whose ideas boil down to little more than a grammar of unhappiness: my favorite novelist, Romain Gary.
Over-Love
Until the February of his eleventh year, Joseph Cohen felt an inordinate kind of sympathy for all earthly things he encountered, even—and in some moods, especially—for inanimate objects.
Game of Chance
About halfway through last August, I had the great pleasure of meeting a current Princeton senior. I have no idea if she remembers meeting me, or frankly if she even knows who I am, but that’s really beside the point. After some opening pleasantries, she asked if I knew where I’d be living. When I said that I was in Mathey, she responded that she had been in Mathey. Then I said I was in Joline.
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?
Observing FIFA
1:01 AM: After a long, productive night of studying, I decide to retire to my suite in an attempt to unwind and, eventually, fall asleep. Somehow, I know even before I enter my room that the nightly ritual has begun. I steel myself as I approach the front door.
Letter from Lia Beach
For the island has harpooned me.
For the day will not end.
For salt-drunk I swam to an underwater cave and saw clear through but the sea pressed me and I turned.
For I am glad you could not see me clamber onto the stone beach, awkward as a palsied horse and naked but for goggles.
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.