In case you ever need to smuggle a plant onto an airplane for an extended flight, a Dixie cup with a couple of toothpick holes poked in the bottom and a foil cover will do the trick. This advice is well-tested — in August of 2022, I flew five hours across the United States with three pieces of luggage and a tiny plant in a Dixie cup. This plant was an aloe vera, the runt of its litter: a tiny sprig of green with two skinny leaves and a pat of dirt. When I’d massaged it out of a root ball from our garden box back home, I knew it wouldn’t survive a month without me.
I still remember how I checked on it the whole flight: lifting the lid, giving it air and some light, prodding the dirt back down, and setting it gingerly upright in my backpack. In retrospect, it’s so apparent how my anxiety over first-year move-in manifested in fussing over this little plant — how I mothered it when there was no one there to mother me.
Sometimes I wonder how I kept it alive all of freshman year in the dim depths of Whitman, quite possibly the worst place for a sun-loving plant to live. On sunny days I’d set it right up against the windowsill to photosynthesize. I watched as it grew longer and skinnier, its leaves forming a different shape from the thick, wide aloes back home under the California sun. I had a single that year, so it was just me and this little plant on the other side of the continent. It was good company for late nights studying and early morning breakfasts at my desk. Every once in a while, I’d look up, notice its color, and dribble some water onto the soil. Two leaves grew into three. One plant became two plants, and then two became seven.
I’ll admit it: I am a bit of a plant mama. Three of the dorm plants I’ve collected were from succulent giveaways. I went in thinking I’d just browse and came out with my hands full. Two are aloe babies from back home, which survived the transcontinental journey swaddled in paper towels. For weeks, I kept them in water to propagate roots before transplanting them to dirt. One is store-bought: a Grecian bust of a frowning Adonis with a succulent sprouting out of his mossy curls. My roommate has dubbed it Maximilian.
To some people, plants are just plants — to me, they’re like companions. If they can live here, so can I. If they can stick it out through a gloomy twiggy East Coast winter, so can I. At some point, I revived an old tradition and began to draw funny faces on the pots. So at risk of anthropomorphizing dorm plants, I now have Determined Plant, Sleepy Plant, Cool Plant, and Happy Plant. Plus Maximilian, who’s always looking somewhat constipated. After a long day, their quirky faces cheer me up.
Like me, each of them has been through their own journeys to get here. Take Determined Plant: after I picked it up from a succulent giveaway, it promptly dropped all of its leaves and went nearly bald before regrowing the tiniest little leaf shoot. Even the original little aloe is a veteran with one leaf propped up on a toothpick crutch, a few inches taller than it was when it left California. In truth, plants are more resilient than we give them credit for. Last summer, I had to abandon some of them in the Forbes garden greenhouse, left to their own devices through humid days under the care of a plant babysitter. I was surprised — and grateful — to find them alive in the fall, looking just as perky and green as when I left. Seeing them reminds me of how long I’ve been here and how much I’ve grown.
Beyond that, my dorm plants are a method of self-care. Princeton days can feel long. Sometimes mornings can feel like they happened ages ago. Tending to my plants is a way to stop in a busy day. Pause. Assess. Give care where needed. It’s a moment for quiet reflection and recentering. With a twelve-week semester, it can be easy to neglect myself. But the plants — I can’t neglect them. And caring for them is caring for myself, even if it’s just a little.
Jessica Wang is a member of the Class of 2026 and a staff writer for the Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at jessica.wang@princeton.edu.
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