Dear Isabel

Ah, if I knew then what I know now, I could fill a thousand blue books. Or write 10 theses. But instead, I'll try to compress the wisdom I've gathered over my four years here into the rough size of a Blackboard post. Despite the all the late-night cram sessions, Frist salads, and Wawa runs, I've distilled my thoughts on if I could do it all over again into two key points.

Seminars, seminars, seminars

If I were to redo one thing about my academic experience at Princeton, it would be to take more seminars. For the first two years here, I dallied in many departments (like I thought I was supposed to) but now realize I only skimmed the surface of so many fields. Once I took a small journalism class where I really got to know the professor (I still have his cell phone number), I realized there was no going back to the large lecture. But don't get me wrong: There is something romantic about McCosh 50, where you get to feel like you're living a quintessential college life and have lots of friends to sit with during class. But what's the endgame of it? Not learning nearly as much as you would have had you engaged with the material on a deeper level. I just remember sitting through weekly sociology lectures with a New York Times crossword puzzle neatly taped into my notebook. By the time the 50 minutes was up, I would have completed the puzzle, which I deemed a better mental exercise than taking notes. I bet you can guess how well I did in that class...

Don't let yourself forget

My time at Princeton has been both memorable and unmemorable. Sure, it's been the best four years of my life to date (aside from those from 0-4 when I was wheeled around in a stroller without a care in the world), but there's a lot I can't remember. And I don't mean because I blacked it out - I have simply forgotten. Yes, I remember those big events, like taking a class with Joyce Carol Oates or seeing a roach scurry across the floor of my Forbes single, but there's a lot of quotidiana that I just can't remember. Which is why I encourage you, freshman, to record as much of your Princeton experience as you can. I know scrapbooking may be a little passe (or was it never de mode to begin with?), but there are other ways of documenting life at Princeton. Why not keep a journal, no matter how religiously you update it? Or take lots of pictures? You may not be the more-facebook.com-albums-than-friends type, but looking back on it, I'm suddenly jealous of those people with more photos than they know what to do with. At least they remember where they were on a random afternoon back in December 2005.

Certainly, I'm no expert at this whole college thing, as I've made countless mistakes along the way, and I'd make countless more if I were to do it over again. But maybe it's just acknowledging those mistakes that gives me the hindsight I need to leave this place. Or maybe not.