The end of March calls to mind a time when most of us were exhibiting the obsessive, frenetic, pessimistic and self-indulgent personalities that college applicants inevitably develop right about now. On that much-awaited and much-dreaded day — was the selection of April Fools’ Day somebody’s idea of a joke? — I know that at least every applicant in India, because of the cursed time difference, was up at about 4 a.m., blearily and eagerly peering at a computer screen but at the same time just wanting to run back to bed, get under the covers and be content in their ignorance.
Remembering what it was like to be a “hopeful-potential-possible-maybe, maybe, maybe I just might get in” Princetonian rather than an actual Princetonian makes me wonder what shapes the life that I lead here now. For me and most of the people I know, Princeton was the Holy Grail of all universities. It was considered as close to perfect as possible. A renowned faculty, interesting classes in subjects you never knew existed, a stunning campus, a huge financial endowment, the works. But upon arriving here, the now-obvious realization hit me: Princeton is both more and less than those cold statistics.
Our lives are shaped and our time consumed by our larger commitments: what classes we’re taking this semester, who we room with, where we live on campus, which student groups we’re members of. But though our lives are defined, structured and centered on this larger picture, it’s the little things we encounter in our daily lives that make Princeton feel like home.
They aren’t always nice things, certainly. Finishing an essay 10 minutes before it’s due, sprinting to the nearest printer cluster, hurling yourself at the computer and learning, with a frantic look in your eyes, that the printer doesn’t work is by no means a pleasurable experience. But Princeton seems to have its own gold nuggets that don’t come across in a college catalog but are exciting when you encounter them: getting 100 Paw Points just for eating in a tent for a month or being taught by a professor who won an Oscar for her documentary and tells you she loves your accent every time you utter a single word.
These little things are what breed familiarity. They are predictable, routine details that outline the comfort zones we establish at Princeton. The note in my bathroom that reads, “After you shower, do not be sour. So that water we do not retain, please be so kind as to wipe the drain.” The Plum-A-Granate Snapple, available strictly at the C-Store in Frist and not in the gallery, that is the only diet drink I have ever loved in my entire life. Walking back from chemistry lectures and sticking out my tongue at my friend on his way to lecture (his preferred form of greeting), three times a week.
When I visited, Princeton was a maze of buildings. Or more correctly, a maze of buildings that remained determinedly and, I think, proudly unidentifiable because having no form of identification whatsoever was something of a fashion statement. But now the Woodrow Wilson fountain isn’t a beautiful ode to nature in the middle of a hectic college campus: It’s the fountain that I was made to dive and hunt for coins in while being splashed with a manic ferocity by international pre-orientation volunteers. The walk from Prospect to Frist isn’t a scenic route, pleasantly shaded with green trees. It’s the walk on which, when walking back from a philosophy lecture, I once watched four people slip and fall dramatically on precisely the same patch of ice in quick succession. And on which, after all my sadistic giggling, I (probably deservedly) slipped as well. The physical description is now subsumed by something more: the attachment of some small, often meaningless memory or thought to them. And it is these tiny details that gradually make Princeton less like a tourist attraction for applicants and more like the home it ultimately becomes.
Camille Framroze is a freshman from Bombay, India. She can be reached at framroze@princeton.edu.
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