To all the buildings I’ve never been in before

To all the buildings I’ve never been in before: I’m sorry. Sometimes, I lose myself walking the same paths I’ve walked a hundred times before. It’s so easy. McDonnell Hall to McCosh Hall. McCosh to Frist Campus Center. Frist to New South Building. New South to Whitman College. I get caught up in the day-to-day, retracing my steps between the usual places. I know the stairs of Frist well from my early visits to late meal, the package room, and the quiet third floor. I have walked the basement passages of Whitman that will lead you from dorm to dining hall. I have spent hours in New South covering the whiteboard walls in diagrams and outlines. But you, you nondescript building on my weekly route — I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance.

In one of my favorite childhood book series, the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage, there’s a ghost named Alther Mella. He can talk, impart wisdom, and spy on the living by flying around and passing through walls. But there’s a catch: He cannot visit places he hadn’t been to in his living life. He’s trapped within the bounds of his old haunts.

It’s only a premise for a kids’ novel, but it stuck with me. What would it be like if I walked Princeton’s campus as a ghost? Wouldn’t it be terrible if I was stuck perpetually walking the same route up McDonnell to McCosh, and from McCosh to Frist? Or visiting the exact same bathroom or shower stall, just because I was a creature of habit during my time at Princeton? If I became a ghost right now, would I regret not exploring more?

There are moments when I’m seized by a sudden impetus to break out of my regular bounds. This campus is so small and so walkable that I ought to know every inch of it. Walk into every room. Touch every wall. Take a left turn instead of a right turn. Who knows what I’ll find? Once, in my freshman year, I stumbled across a secret garden tucked away in Butler College. It was like an outdoor grass amphitheater, with a spiraling stone wall tracing its way around. Overgrown with weeds, it looked like a place from a fairy book, hidden and untouched.

Later that year, my desperate need to finish my writing seminar paper drew me to a large glass building next to McCosh in search of the mysterious Architecture Library. There, ensconced in a bowl-shaped chair, I furiously typed out the last few pages of my paper to the distant sound of music on my headphones. I’ve never taken an architecture class. I probably never will. But nothing stopped me — no invisible boundary excluded entry for non-architecture students. In our four years, we have the opportunity to make every space our own. Why not take a chance?

To this day, the Architecture Library is one of my favorite spaces to finish an unfinished paper. When I crave natural light, I go to the Carl Icahn Laboratory, the soaring glass building bordering Poe Field, home to the molecular genomics program. Both are places I found while exploring new buildings, pushing away the anxiety that I’d stick out as an interloper. I’ve found that very few doors on campus are actually closed to undergraduates.

This fall, ever since I committed to a study abroad program for my junior spring, I’ve kept a personal bucket list: Work in every library on campus. See movies at the Princeton Garden Theatre. Go to a football game. Try every item on the menu at my eating club. I’ll still have senior year, but until then, I’m keen to soak up as much of campus as I can before I leave. I started going on morning walks with a friend to explore beyond campus. It’s surprising how little time it takes for the streets of this small town to become familiar.

And yet, sometimes, the strangest surprises come from places I think I know. By looking a little more closely, I discover something new. On one pass down the Frist stairs, I noticed that there were tiny names inscribed in faint orange font on the orange metal banners. On an underground walk to the Whitman dining hall, I noticed with some amusement that there was a giant, larger-than-life human skull locked in a cage between Fisher Hall and Wendell Hall.

And if I look even more closely, I find the marks of those who walked the campus before me. The concrete pillars of the Architecture Library tell a story; it’s written in faint pencil messages and lazy sketched doodles. On the wooden tables at PJ’s Pancake House, carved initials stand for scores of past students and visitors. They’re one way to leave a legacy — to prove that you came, you explored, and you changed a place just as it changed you. In them, I see generations of past students leaving their footprints on this campus, speaking to us across time: I was here. I was here. I was here.

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[at]princeton.edu.