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Humans of Princeton: loving the little things

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Front yard of the Nassau Inn.
Angel Kuo / The Daily Princetonian

When you ask people what they love about Princeton, we almost always hear similar responses. For these interviews, we wanted to go a little deeper to see what made people really fall in love with Princeton.

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Hugh Shields ’24, Won-Jae Chang ’24, and Dwaipayan Saha ’24 are all roommates and were playing spikeball together.
Angel Kuo / The Daily Princetonian
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The Daily Princetonian: What’s something niche you love about Princeton?

Hugh Shields: Guyot Dinosaur. I switched to Geosciences, so I didn’t know about it originally, but now I do. And I recently found out that they’re trying to move it, and it’s going to cost like $1 million to move to the new building.

Won-Jae Chang: Oh, I like the Dod basement but like the section that’s not where parties are hosted, it’s a nice place to study.

Dwaipayan Saha: I used to not like Murray-Dodge but it’s growing on me. I feel like when I went in the past it was always crowded, and now I don’t really study there but I go there for the cookies, and they’re really nice.

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Sabrina Nicacio ’25 is a transfer student majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Angel Kuo / The Daily Princetonian

The 'Prince': What’s something niche that made you fall in love with Princeton?

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Sabrina Nicacio: Dance actually. Because I’m a transfer student, sometimes it’s been hard to find communities that I belong to outside of the transfers, and I feel like dance is a place where I feel like I belong to and make friends. I’m in BodyHype, but I’m also president of BAC (Black Arts Company), I’m a committee member for Doro (Dorobucci), and I’m also a member of diSiac, so I’m very involved in the dance community.

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Edward Zhang ’24 is Civil and Environmental Engineering major who is both on Club Badminton and Princeton University Sinfonia, among other things.
Angel Kuo / The Daily Princetonian

The ‘Prince’: What’s your favorite part about being here?

Edward Zhang: Not very niche but, the resources. One of the most transformative experiences for me was being able to play with an orchestra because I played music growing up, but I never intended to pursue a music minor or anything serious. Like to have the opportunity to play with an orchestra despite that is a really big deal to me.

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Ying Ou is a lecturer for the Chinese Language Program as part of the East Asian Studies department.
Angel Kuo / The Daily Princetonian

*The following interview was translated to English from Mandarin Chinese.

The ‘Prince’: What is something special about Princeton that makes you love working here?

Ying Ou: I think the most special thing about Princeton are the students. Even though they have tiring work and so many other commitments, they always come to class, and they continue to be hardworking, even have a sense of humor to go with it. Teaching at Princeton gives me a sense of achievement that other schools wouldn’t give me, and it’s because of the students that give teachers that feeling, by seeing your progress.

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Yongqi Wang is a first year Ph.D. student in the Neuroscience department, coming from MIT.
Angel Kuo / The Daily Princetonian

The ‘Prince’: What’s something you didn’t expect to love coming here?

Yongqi Wang: I didn’t expect that [Club Badminton] would have free shuttlecocks. Before, at MIT we had to pay for them, or have our own. Also I didn’t expect that we would have scheduled practice every week; I’m personally a very passionate badminton player, I’ve been playing for like six years.

Angel Kuo is the art director for the ‘Prince.’

Please send corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.