Editorial: Imagine your orange future

As at most prominent universities, academics are paramount at Princeton. But the structure of a Princeton education is unique. Princeton’s distrinctive character as a major research university with an undergraduate focus yields interaction with leading professors and access to top-notch resources, even for freshmen. Unlike many of Princeton’s peer institutions, graduate students will not overshadow you — and they will not teach your classes.

Its emphasis on junior independent work and senior theses will enable you to become immersed and accomplished in your chosen discipline: By the end of senior year, you’ll have become a producer, rather than simply a consumer, of scholarship. Princeton will enable you to explore a particular area within your academic field in new and original ways, while simultaneously encouraging a broad exposure to the liberal arts.

But students are not only encouraged to explore new subjects; we’re also encouraged to explore new places. In addition to the new international gap year program, opportunities for study and work experience abroad abound. Princeton offers international study exchanges, upper-level seminars with break trips to places like Mexico, Greece or Ghana, and funding for nonprofit initiatives in foreign countries. The University also sponsors its own summer language programs. Princeton in Beijing, Princeton in Ishikawa, Princeton in Munich and Princeton in France give students the chance to have an intensive learning experience far beyond the FitzRandolph Gate.

As a recently admitted student, you have likely heard of a social scene oriented around Prospect Avenue and dominated by the eating clubs. While the many stereotypes attached to each club add to perceived stratification of social life at Princeton, it’s important for you to know that the eating clubs do offer many undergraduates a social experience that fosters a strong feeling of community.

You’ll never lack things to do outside the library or away from the Street. The campus-wide Dodgeball Tournament brings a variety of student groups together to try their skills at Dillon Gymnasium. Murray-Dodge Cafe offers free tea and freshly baked cookies every night from 10 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. And last week, a massive group pillow fight spontaneously erupted on the lawn outside Frist Campus Center. Even our professors know how to have a good time: In spring 2007, professors Robert George and Cornel West GS ’80 closed out their joint freshman seminar on great books with a musical jam session.

We’re a quiet campus in an Orange Bubble, and we avoid the noise and bustle of the big cities. But if you ever need to get away, have no fear: the Dinky will whisk you away in its two-car shuttle and you’ll be in Philly or New York in no time.

There’s so much more that we can’t fit into 550 words. But when you come back in the fall, we hope you’ll help us add to that list.

See you then.