This will be my last column published before winter break and my final semester at Princeton. I have taken some time to think about how I will spend senior spring. With a thesis to be written, wonderful friends to spend time with, and enriching classes to occupy my time, I certainly will not be bored. As I look forward to 2025, I am resolving to take better care of myself in the most fundamental ways, and I encourage other Princeton students to reevaluate what we prioritize on a daily basis.
My goal for the fall semester was to stretch myself in new directions beyond my regular routine. I have taken a fall break trip to England with the Princeton Rose Castle Society. I’ve made a point to make new friends, have conversations with those who think very differently from me, and get involved in new activities — including Princeton’s tap dancing group Tap Cats and cheese-making workshops through Butler College — that I may have overlooked in years past. Even though I felt busy and stretched thin at times, I was grateful for the new friends and experiences I gained.
Looking forward, I am reminding myself of a rule of thumb that I learned from Father Zack Swantek, chaplain of the Aquinas Institute. There are four essentials that should be in balance every day: sleep, food, prayer, and exercise. Such simple things, but why have I found many days when one or more of these things are severely lacking?
College is a time to learn as much as we can from our classes, our experiences, and our relationships. We should be striving for excellence in our studies and cultivating great friendships. There is so much value in taking the initiative to sign up for things that you didn’t think you would do or to challenge that idea that you didn’t think you would be faced with. But in the midst of growing up throughout our four years in college, these ends should come after taking care of ourselves as human beings. We are human beings before we are Princeton students, after all.
Twenty-four hours at Princeton feels too short. I often find myself justifying my overstuffed schedules to myself in unhealthy ways.
“I did not have time to write this paper because I had social obligations all day, so I’ll forego sleep to write it tonight;” “I’ll skip a meal to go to this event;” “Don’t have time for prayer today, oops.”
In doing so, we fail to honor the importance of the four essentials.
But the consequences of cutting the four essentials are severe. I don’t think I need to devote several paragraphs on the benefits of sleep, food, exercise, and prayer or meditation. We all know about their importance — it helps us keep our minds and bodies healthy. The problem is not that we think they’re not important, but that we think that we can afford to forgo them today because we can make up for them later.
But we can do better. We are better at our other obligations when we take care of our four essentials first. If we don’t have time for the other things afterwards, they are not worth our time. No matter how interesting or fun or pressing our other obligations are, they should be reduced before our essentials are placed on the chopping block.
College is a testing ground for adult life. If we want to learn to be healthy adults, we need to know that we can keep a healthy routine now. We will always have obligations. Work, friendships, and responsibilities don’t end with graduation. In fact, they may increase. If we learn to manage the Princeton workload without letting it get the better of us, our immune systems, mental health, families, and communities will all thank us now and later down the line.
Princeton is an incredibly unique and enriching place. We can make the most of your four years by keeping our baselines stable. As I move into my final semester, I call on myself, my fellow seniors, and underclass students to prioritize creating a daily schedule that contains enough of the four essentials: sleep, food, prayer or meditation, and exercise.
Julianna Lee is a senior from Demarest, N.J., majoring in Politics. She can be reached at julianna.lee[at]princeton.edu. Julianna is a big fan of road trips and has been to 43 states. Lee’s column, “To Old Nassau,” runs every three weeks on Tuesdays. All of Lee’s columns can be read here.
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