In mastering Dante and college, the first try is just practice

I'm excited about the start of my second semester at Princeton for many reasons. One of these is my freshman seminar on Dante's "Divine Comedy." Though it's a requisite for every student of Italian, I didn't read the "Comedy" during my exchange year because of the challenge 13th century Florentine poses to a nonnative speaker. In a way, then, Dante is unfinished business from my ten months in Italy. The paradox inherent in reading the "Comedy," however, suggests that Dante is just as relevant to the American college campus as it is to the Italian school.

The last line of the seminar description poses this contradiction: "We shall judge [the seminar] a success if, at its end, each of its members is able to say, 'Now I am ready to read Dante's "Divine Comedy!' " A friend of mine enrolled in the Humanistic Studies sequence told me that since the "Comedy" is so complex, one is only able to comprehend it on the second or third reading. The first merely lays the foundation for further study.

This reminds me of something my host told me when I came to Princeton for Pre-Frosh Weekend. By the end of the fall semester, freshmen start to figure things out, to know how things work and their way around campus. After a semester, freshmen finally begin to feel like true Princeton students. Thus going to college is just like reading the "Divine Comedy": the first attempt is really practice.

I've learned a lot from my first attempt. I can direct visitors to the Friend Center and pronounce Guyot Hall. I recognize the names of famous professors and have even spotted a few. I've figured out when to do laundry to find three driers empty and how not to turn my whites pink. I know who to ask for help and how to SCORE. I've survived the crunch of Dean's Date and the stress of finals, embracing the 12-hour period of euphoria between the two. I know how to beg for passes and who to ask for meal-exchanges. I've found great places to meet people and learned to be the first to extend my hand and smile.

I've learned how to explain Princeton to others — our strange academic schedule, residential colleges, and eating clubs. Even after my writing seminar, I still love writing, though my pen-to-paper scribbling has been replaced by rapid keystrokes. Chinese may not fulfill my language requirement, but it does fill my time, six hours of class a week plus listening to tapes and copying characters.

I've also learned that optimism is healthy in small doses, but realistic expectations — and in academics, actual preparation — serve me better. A capella tryouts taught me that rejection is a fact of life; the 'Prince' showed me, however, that it doesn't have to be the rule. When all else fails, sleep is the one thing most guaranteed to bring happiness. Friends are the people who bring me food when I miss meals writing papers and who offer hugs when they sense that I've had a rough day.

When I think that everyone else knows exactly what they'll do when they "grow up," and I'm the only one who wants to stay young forever, talking to others has made me reconsider. Though many plan to become doctors, lawyers, politicians and investment bankers, I've met other souls along the way who are content to meander. Lacking a fixed trajectory doesn't necessarily mean that one is lost. Dante wrote an entire masterpiece about the journey. Remembering that life is a process, and few know the end, helps me not to worry that my own path is less than deliberate.

In the spirit of college life being as complex as Dante's "Comedy," the entire first semester should be called "orientation." It takes that long to learn even a part of everything that we must know. Only five months after setting foot on campus can I truly say, "Now I am ready to begin my time as a student at Princeton University." Emily Stolzenberg is a freshman from Morgantown, W. Va. She can be reached at estolzen@princeton.edu.