Goodbye, Princeton: Lessons Learned From Princeton Year One™
¡Hola a todos y todas!
I write to you perched atop my bare mattress—yes, the mattress topper is still on, and yes, it looks like it was wrapped by a raccoon with one functioning paw—because rolling it up without a vacuum to suck the air out is apparently an Olympic sport. I’m sitting in the skeleton of my room, everything packed, walls empty of my beloved national park posters and the iconic “Buckle Up, It’s the Law” poster (don’t ask—actually, definitely ask, it’s hilarious). What a wild few weeks. What a year. What a full circle moment, as I wait for 11 a.m., when my roommate is taking me out for boba—as repayment, I assume, for that time I bribed her with a large Starbucks coffee to help me rearrange the room when I moved in mid-semester. (I’d just escaped the Quad of Perpetual Partying, a place where the hours of midnight to 3 a.m. smelled like curling iron, tequila, and existential dread.)
Before I get into the official segment—Lessons I Learned My First Year at Princeton™, including such classics as “mathematics is the most democratic form of governance” I need to reflect on the past three weeks, which have honestly felt like a fever dream directed by a caffeinated squirrel.
First up: one of my closest high school friends fell off a cliff. No, not like a metaphorical “falling off a cliff into adulthood” moment—I mean a literal, 50-foot Colorado mountain beast. And of all places to land? He landed on his face. His face. But don’t worry, he’s okay. Thanks to the swift response of his friends and some top-tier EMTs, he got carried off the side of the mountain and treated quickly at a hospital. I talked to him Tuesday, and he’s in shockingly good spirits—especially after I reminded him that he’s now getting, for free, what celebrities pay thousands for: a brand-new nose and fancy teeth. Jokes aside, I’m genuinely beyond grateful he’s okay and that he was—miraculously—wearing a helmet. Stuff like this really makes you pause and think about life and how absurdly lucky we all are to be walking around upright.
In other news, I finally wrapped up my writing seminar project—on the rhetoric of repression, connecting Francoist language policies to the modern backlash against inclusive Spanish. Honestly? It might be the best thing I’ve ever written. The class focused on “entering scholarly conversations,” which sounds polite but is really just academic Hunger Games. You gather sources, imagine them arguing in a room, and then you burst in like, “Hey everyone! Here’s some spicy new data!”—and hope they don’t eat you alive. It’s time-consuming, often soul-destroying, and somehow also deeply satisfying. And I’m proud. I really am. After turning it in, I asked ChatGPT to rate it. It called it “freaking phenomenal” and said it was publishable. I even asked what level of education the writer must have, and it said, “PhD student.” Then I asked, “Could a freshman have written this?” and it replied, “Nearly impossible.” So, yeah. Let me have my proud writer moment. If you want to read it, I’ll link it below!
And now… the life lessons. Buckle up (get it?) because here they come:
Lesson 1: The
Roommate Gods Hate Me!
I don’t know what I did to offend them, but the roommate gods clearly hate me. As I started to explain earlier, I didn’t kick off my Princeton year by basking in a “vigorous academic environment.” No, I started it by scrubbing used cigarettes and half-drunk Jell-O shots off the floor.
A fond memory from those first few weeks? Sipping scalding tropical fruit tea from a fine china teacup (yes, really) while standing next to the Swiffer, gossiping with my neighbors about my wild roommates. The ones who had an actual line down the hallway just to get into our room. Imagine Studio 54 but with less glitter and more spilled vodka.
With luck, the next stop on my roommate journey was my current one: a girl so chill we basically never spoke. I think all of our conversations combined could fit on two hands and still be shorter than an episode of a 20-minute kids’ TV show. She was a night owl; I was a morning person. We passed each other like ghosts, and sometimes it felt like I had a single. The best part? I never heard her sneak in at 2 a.m. after… whatever she was doing.
While we might have delt with some mice living in her laundry, in general, it was an okay experience.
So guess who got to greet the exterminator?
That’s right — me. And guess who had to sit through a 20-minute lecture about cleanliness and “not leaving food out”? Also me. Despite my repeated, “Yes sir, it’s not my laundry,” he persisted with the lecture and placed one single mousetrap. Just one. I’m pretty sure my dad put more traps in his car when he found mice.
Then, the pièce de résistance: one morning, a team of building staff burst into the room without knocking to seal off whatever hole they thought the mouse came from. I assumed this would be one guy. Wrong. It was five rugged workmen carrying a large board. This is a great time to remind you: I have a very small room. There was no universe in which these five men and their cargo were going to fit.
I couldn’t stay to enjoy the carpentry party because I had math class, but I imagine it spilled into the hallway. Probably a fire hazard. Definitely a vibe.
Lesson 2: The Best Profs Have Side Hustles as Comedians
The professors I remember most aren’t the ones who taught the hardest material—but the ones who taught it like stand-up comics. No one can rival my Spanish prof, who had the magical ability to speed through a full monologue muy rápido in Spanish and then suddenly slam a punchline in English like, “Or not, I don’t want to lose my job.” But my math professor this semester? He gave him a serious run for his money.
For those of you who don’t know, I took Linear Algebra again this semester—yes, again—because Princeton decided they were too good for my transfer credit. Honestly, this version of Lin Alg was ridiculous. Back in high school, I was analyzing real-life giraffe population data and giving a 40-minute conservation presentation. Here at Princeton, we were all about simplicity. We barely scratched the surface in comparison.
So did I have a solid academic reason to waste my Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 to 12:20 attending lecture and taking notes? Not really. But I showed up for something even better: the jokes. I started a “Prof ____’s Best Quotes of All Time” list—a document that ended up being seven pages long. I presented it to him at the end of the semester like a weird academic tribute. Some highlights included:
- (Finds a weird mop thing): “I love high-tech teaching… This is a mop… that’s wet.” (Draws on the table.) “This is for the progress of humanity. This is an animation. The source of our knowledge is right here. If the mop is already on the table, it is not part of the basis.”
- “As a gift, you can hold onto those… sell them on eBay.” (dead batteries) (Tries mic with new ones.) “What kind of joke was that? I’ll give you a second chance.” (Goes to drawer.) “There’s everything in here. It’s unbelievable.” (Fixes mic and says hi into it.) “You have it! Maybe you should teach the lecture. Those idiots put the dead batteries in the package—it’s like a dead body that resurrects for five minutes.”
- “The best thing would be to put it (the mic) on my tongue… but then you wouldn’t know about determinants.” (proceeds to lick the mic)
- “Now imagine I go to China to teach French to some Chinese students: 23 hours a day with one hour for survival… because I do a great job teaching, as you know. Imagine one of my students starts teaching a French class, and then their students teach a class… eventually, they’ll be teaching Chinese.” (Big pause.) “Now, I want to talk about orthogonal matrices.”
- “Did you hear about the earthquake? We were buried alive and ate rats!”
- “You’re in the freeway carpool lane in L.A. You get pulled over because it’s just you. Tell the officer there are two copies of you in the same seat.”
- “I can’t even say it’s been a long day.”
- (When talking about studying for the final exam) “Just practice scanning… It’s now or never to show you can live in the 21st century.”
I could go on, but it’s really one of those “you had to be there” situations.
Moral of the story? Be funny, and people will listen to you—even at 11 a.m. on a Thursday when the matrix math isn’t mathing.
Lesson 3: Group Projects Will Suck No Matter What
I thought I had finally cracked the code. A partner who actually wanted to contribute. A highly detailed, color-coded calendar (created by yours truly, of course). Clear communication, collaborative slides, comments in Google Docs. It was foolproof.
Then came the incident with the girlfriend—and everything unraveled.
Still, that ended up being the best group project experience I’ve had here. Which tells you everything you need to know about the state of group work in college.
Let’s rewind.
In the fall, I built an entire solar system-themed Rube Goldberg machine by myself. Yes, alone.
10/10 would not recommend. Especially the part where I got kicked out of the lab because my project was “too big” and ended up carrying the sun and the car pulley system a full mile in the rain to a random dorm basement that had a study room big enough to fit it.
And then there was the semester-long Spanish podcast. It was supposed to be a group effort. In reality, I dragged along three people, one of whom didn’t engage at all until 10 p.m. the night before our third deadline. Wild, right?
But there was a small miracle.
One of my group partners from the fall—someone I’d only met once before our big presentation, who barely collaborated—actually came back and apologized. No excuses, just owned up to how the project went. (Though I may or may not have paired her with one of my flaky podcast partners this semester, so maybe karma paid her a visit first.)
Her apology didn’t change how weird and frustrating our project had been, but honestly, it meant a lot. No one had ever done that before—acknowledged the mess, much less taken responsibility. And because she did, I genuinely forgave her.
So yeah, group projects will probably always suck. But once in a while, you get a moment of humanity. And that might just be enough.
Lesson 4: I
Don’t Think I Can Go Back to Small Rural Town Living
The boba. The
avocado salads. The ten different places to get an iced caramel latte. Mexican
food, Chinese, Thai, falafel (which I still don’t like), acai bowls, pizza—you
name it. And I can walk to all of them.
Sure, I miss my days on 395, music blasting just a little too loud, my purple sunglasses on, my brother in the backseat watching YouTubers scream at video games. That was freedom too. But walking? Walking is magical. Biking too—although my bike got stolen two weeks ago, so I’m still bitter about that.
What I love is how easy everything is here. I don’t have to drive to get what I need. I don’t even have to plan ahead. There are five different supermarkets just a ten-minute ride away on a clean, electric bus. I can step outside and grab any kind of food. Entertainment? Right outside my dorm. There’s a gorgeous theater literally across the street. A pool? A gym? Yep—right there. A library? I think there are more than 20, including one right outside my door.
Life is convenient—and I love it. I have city/suburb taste. I crave options, immediacy, movement. I wouldn’t survive in rural conditions because, as my dad so eloquently puts it, “You can’t order a Frappacapa-fufu drink in the middle of Maine.”
They have hot coffee and that’s it.
Lesson 5: Organization Is Key
Don’t make my mistake: writing a paper the day before it’s due in the basement of some random dorm, surrounded by twenty scattered articles and a table that looks like a crime scene of academic despair.
Thankfully, I’ve discovered the holy trinity of academic organization:
Zotero (magical for managing sources), Obsidian (a glorious note-mapping system), and waking up at 6 a.m. with coffee (yes, seriously).
Zotero helps me wrangle research chaos into order. Obsidian lets me literally map out concepts, which is life-changing for a visual learner like me. I even made a giant knowledge map of my electricity and magnetism class. It looked like an electric spider web of understanding.
And the early mornings? Game-changer. Studying physics (which I normally hate) at 6 a.m. somehow didn’t feel like studying. It felt like I tricked my brain into skipping the pain part of the study-pain equation. By the time breakfast rolled around, I had already tackled the worst part of my day. Is this what having your life together feels like?
Lesson 6: Always Ask About Allergies
I may or may not have almost sent a friend to the hospital over a free hazelnut coffee from Coffee Club.
Turns out, they were allergic to tree nuts. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask. I just thought I was being a generous little caffeine fairy.
Moral of the story: always ask. Free coffee isn’t worth anaphylaxis.
Lesson 7: The Blindfold and Melatonin
A college essential. Truly.
For those nights when your roommate has a paper due and decides that the most inspiring writing environment is one where every light is on, their keyboard sounds like a jackhammer, and the vibes are “productivity at 2 a.m.”
Cue: the blindfold. The melatonin. The magic.
Sleep like you’re somewhere peaceful—even if you’re actually in the middle of a literary construction zone.
Lesson 8: Use Your Resources
If you’re going to pay to go to college, you better milk it for all it’s worth.
Free food? I’ve eaten enough “event pizza” to keep a small club fed for a week.
Merch? I’ve got a free winter coat, quarter zip, hats, shirts, pins, yo-yos—you name it, I probably grabbed it off a folding table on my way to class.
But it’s not just swag. I’ve made this campus work for me. I’ve studied in almost every library like I’m trying to complete a weird academic scavenger hunt, flipped through centuries-old manuscripts in Special Collections, used my $300 free dining points on fancy town snacks, obtained a large chuck of money for my Spain study abroad, and wandered into Late Meal just for an ice cream sandwich. No regrets.
Sure, I still have beef with having to do a physics lab without any tools and building half my project with my dad’s toolkit in a random dorm basement. And yes, every makerspace has its own complicated 3D printer training system, each more niche than the last. But despite that: I’ve explored trails, biked miles, played rugby under a giant football dome, visited Einstein’s classroom, sat at the bench my dad swears Einstein once pondered relativity on, gone to the Met, and downloaded every expensive software license Princeton offers like a true digital pirate.
I’ve gone to the Writing Center, recorded podcasts in a professional studio, gone to concerts, swam in the pool, tested out every shower stall in the dorms for maximum water pressure, broken things in chem lab (sorry TA), and even survived a 3-day backpacking trip in 100-degree weather with trip leaders who got lost and ran out of water.
If it’s there, I’ve probably tried it. Use your resources, people. You’re already paying for them.
I’m sure there are a million other lessons I’ve learned here—ones I should probably remember, but hey, it’s not like I’m in the mood to dig deep into the archives of my brain right now. Lunch is calling my name, and my parents are on their way to move me out, so I’ll be doing some dramatic goodbyes with my college life in just a bit. But before I get lost in the chaos of packing and pretending to care about my laundry, I’ll leave you with one last profound gem from my math professor. Because, really, if you didn’t get a life-changing quote from a math prof, did you even go to college?
• “Maybe I’m hearing voices… ohhhh… see an epiphany; it’s a lie… the gods are visiting us.”
Deep, right? Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll be saying adiós out of here until the next edition, when I’ll be in Spain living my best life (because, obviously, that’s what happens when you go abroad). T-minus 6 days until Spain!
¡Nos vemos en el próximo!
