Small department has big advantages for concentrators

When my roommate turned in her junior paper last year, she submitted it to the politics department office. They took down her name and the time that she turned it in and put it in a box with all the others.

When I turned in my junior paper, my departmental representative gave me a congratulatory hug and put it under her desk calendar. "If I call you panicking about losing your JP, just tell me it's under here, OK?" she said. "Under my desk calendar, don't forget, OK, Sarah?"

I am the only senior in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. There are five undergraduates in the department, and I am the senior class. When I came to Princeton, I told everyone I wanted to major in Russian, politics or Russian politics. As it turned out, those choices were a fairly accurate assessment of my options if I wanted to study Russia.

I could be a politics major and focus on Eastern European politics. I could get a certificate in Russian studies while majoring in politics, history, economics or other related topics. Or I could major in Slavic languages and literatures.

One reason I chose to be a Slavic major was the size of the department. The advantages of personal attention are enormous. There is a 12-to-one professor-to-student ratio in the senior class — yes, professor-to-student. If the four juniors are included — we quadrupled in size last year — the ratio drops to two professors for every student. That's hard to beat.

I know most of the professors in my department fairly well. When it was time for me to choose a thesis adviser, I had the choice of anyone who was interested.

Some people might say that Slavic majors are not employable. But there is nothing less employable about a Russian major than an English major. Even in areas where my language skills may not be helpful, being a Slavic major makes my resume more interesting than a history major's. Having a less traditional educational background catches people's attention. People want to know if I'm going to be a spy, or translate incredibly long novels for a living. I probably will not do either, but I will certainly have had an interesting education wherever I end up.

I will bet that few other students have sung carols with their thesis advisers at a department holiday party. After last year's senior theses were turned in, the department had a luncheon at Prospect House. There I learned what animal everyone in the department would be, if given the chance. (In case you were wondering, the chair of the department would be a bird, my departmental representative would be a hippo and I swayed another professor to be a dolphin with me.)

My relationship with my department is clearly unique. If I could do it all over again, I would make the same decision. I'd be missing out on too much if I didn't.

Sarah Jewett is a Slavic languages and literatures major from Randolph, Vt.