Self

Chinatown Diptych: The Origins of a Writer

Jeffrey Liao

Growing up, writing was my haven. My friends teased me for carrying a marble notebook wherever I went, pages brimming with mediocre poems my 12-year-old mind thought Shakespearean. Words, I discovered, have the power to forge rivers, oceans, mountains. They immortalize the rise and fall of civilizations, etch our names in rock and dust.

THE PROSPECT | 10/08/2020

DISPATCH | Getting used to the noise

DISPATCH | Getting used to the noise

Paige Cromley

It sounds strange when I explain it. Why Boston? Why these girls, who I barely knew before we signed the lease? I still have trouble picturing the series of events that led me here; the days after Princeton announced that fall semester would be online are a blur.

THE PROSPECT | 10/06/2020

Making Princeton at home

José Pablo Fernández García

With all this rumbling in the back of my mind, throughout the past months I stumbled into a habit of trying to bring home the remaining things that make Princeton, well, Princeton.

THE PROSPECT | 10/01/2020

What is ‘Princeton’ without Princeton?

Wendy Ho

Wendy Ho reflects on this unusual semester.

VISUAL ESSAY | 09/20/2020

Going home to ‘Trump’s America’

Going home to ‘Trump’s America’

Madison Mellinger

This summer I was fortunate to be supported by the John C. Bogle ’51 Fellowship in Civic Service to return home and assist Dr. Erika Kitzmiller with her research project, “Youth Inequality, Mobility, and Opportunity in Red and Blue America.” I took this valuable experience as an opportunity to explore the dissonance I felt while reading Vance’s memoir and reflect on my own experience growing up in Appalachia.

THE PROSPECT | 09/17/2020

Triangle’s ‘Old Folks’ Home’ and the future wished for

José Pablo Fernández García

The future I see in front of me for the next couple months is the white wall that stands behind my desk as I write these words. It looks like my friends and classmates and professors confined to Zoom boxes. It looks like more time hundreds of miles away from the place I’d grown to love as my other home. This is all so different from the future I so wish lay ahead instead.

THE PROSPECT | 09/16/2020

The Orange Bubble and the Elixir of Youth

The Orange Bubble and the Elixir of Youth

Claudia Frykberg

Arriving home in March without a return date, I sought to reconnect with those I had lost touch with. In doing so, I learned what could have been and, more importantly, what Princeton has given me instead.

THE PROSPECT | 09/13/2020

I thought I took every precaution. I still tested positive for COVID-19.

Grace Rosenberg

I thought I’d been careful, and indeed I had been — degrees more so than most, if not all, of my friends and family. Then came the email: my SARS-CoV-2 test, which I’d taken as a precaution before seeing my grandparents, and not at all because I was symptomatic, was positive.

THE PROSPECT | 09/10/2020

Last First Day — First First Day

Last First Day — First First Day

Jasmine Lu

Fall semester classes used to kick off on a Wednesday. A wake-up slap after the four-day fever dream known as Frosh Week. Yet it's a Monday — which should usher in some sense of normalcy, since Monday is the start of the typical work week. But come on, it's Princeton. We fly in the face of everything “normal.”

THE PROSPECT | 09/06/2020

A small quandary

A small quandary

Arnav Joshi

This is a peek into my experience with dealing with medical and mental health issues in Princeton’s highly competitive environment. The biographical story form is used to represent my first-person perspective and is an attempt to convey the pressures, emotional struggles, and stresses the situation brought along with it.

THE PROSPECT | 08/16/2020

An open letter to the first-years during your unprecedented transition to Princeton

An open letter to the first-years during your unprecedented transition to Princeton

Hannah Reynolds

Hannah Reynolds, a rising junior in the anthropology department, offers a few words of comfort and wisdom to incoming first-year students.

THE PROSPECT | 08/16/2020

DISPATCH | Finding hope in a time of loss, mourning

Harsimran Makkad

Maintaining relationships, participating in activities with friends and family — even if they are virtual — and consciously making the effort to enjoy little bits of every day have become the cornerstone of my everyday life.

THE PROSPECT | 08/16/2020

Anti-Racist Reading Review: Between the World and Me

Anti-Racist Reading Review: Between the World and Me

Alex Gjaja

In the first installment of The Prospect's Anti-Racist Reading Reviews, Alex Gjaja reads Ta-Nehisi Coates’s profound work Between the World and Me in the context of 2020, reflecting on the visceral violence of racism and the lessons Coates's text offers to universities and university students.

THE PROSPECT | 07/30/2020

DISPATCH | The deer have taken over

DISPATCH | The deer have taken over

Dennis Schaefer

Graduate student Dennis Schaefer shares what it’s like to live on campus in a summer unlike any other.

THE PROSPECT | 07/22/2020

Making peace with senior year

Making peace with senior year

Siyang Liu

Though I can’t change the fact that senior year won’t play out how I wanted it to, for every memory I looked forward to creating, I have many more which I am fortunate to have already experienced.

THE PROSPECT | 07/21/2020

DISPATCH | Eight minutes and 46 seconds

Julia Chaffers

White Americans have participated in protests more than previous uprisings in response to police violence. In big cities and small towns across the nation, this movement has grown into perhaps the largest in U.S. history. Wellesley exemplifies this change.

THE PROSPECT | 07/16/2020

How lucky we are to be alive right now: Reflections on “Hamilton,” grief, and 2020

How lucky we are to be alive right now: Reflections on “Hamilton,” grief, and 2020

AG McGee

Maybe the reason watching the filmed version of “Hamilton” brought to mind so many memories of James Luke was because he, too, is now part of history. And I guess I’m just here, listening to the songs that remind me of my brother and writing down old memories of us as if telling them again could change how they ended.

THE PROSPECT | 07/15/2020

DISPATCH | Great American road trip

DISPATCH | Great American road trip

Carter Gipson

It would be so satisfying to offer some kind of grand insight into the American people and all the places they inhabit, but my only conclusion is that America defies facile generalization.

THE PROSPECT | 07/12/2020

Did Princeton make the best decision? A guide for those grieving, considering gap years, and (for the first time) wishing they could transfer to Cornell

Did Princeton make the best decision? A guide for those grieving, considering gap years, and (for the first time) wishing they could transfer to Cornell

Lillian Chen

Grief does not end in a day. Sometimes it doesn’t ever go away. I know it will surface again sometime in late August, and October during Halloween, and November in the weeks leading up to and during Thanksgiving. What will I be thankful for then?

THE PROSPECT | 07/12/2020

The two faces of Dayton police

The two faces of Dayton police

Katie Heinzer

But in the face of peaceful Black protesters, officers took their Blackness as a signal of violence, disrespect, and “thuggishness.”

THE PROSPECT | 06/30/2020

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