Category: Reflections

Well, Hello Dalai

In Jadwin Gym, His Holiness spoke extensively about love, compassion, and empathy for other people. He urged the audience to focus on the “one-ness of humanity” and to achieve meaningful lives through compassion and dialogue with people different from ourselves.

by on

Left Turn

“One thing I’m sorry for is if I compressed you into that night.”

by on

The Problem with Black History Month

On February 18th, three white students competed on College Jeopardy. In the second half of the show, which, thanks to the Internet, can be viewed on YouTube, the contestants sped through five of the six categories, which included obscure topics such as “Weather Verbs” and “International Cinema Showcase.” For 10 minutes, I waited for any of them to choose a question from the sixth category labeled “African-American History.”

by on

Escape to the Beach

A day at the beach, deconstructed, reconstructed

by on

The Mountain of Olives

Jerusalem’s ancestral rhythms.

by on

Sis Visit

On the night before Valentine’s Day, I ran to the Dinky in the frigid February air, wondering for the hundredth time how life would be different if my sister had gone to Princeton.

by on

A Mysterious De-Personing

“More than a few miles from home, I conclude this first sliver of college convinced of the notion that I’m more fiction than fact. Now more than ever, I feel like a character, and not a good one.”

by on

Mommy Says

Once a month, my mother would choose a single-parenting experience she thought to be humorous or poignant and would write it down for the whole world to read (or at least the subscribers of North Texas). My mother didn’t just archive my brother’s and my childhood, she created public records of all our most embarrassing moments.

by on

The Goddess Treatment

One night in Kyoto, a friend and I ended up in a room the size of a small Princeton double, drinking beer with two blond-coiffed Japanese men who, despite their doting, seemed anxious for us to leave. The place, called “Athena”, was a host club — a lounge where female clients pay for an all-you-can-drink bar menu and an hour or two of conversation with a well-dressed male attendant.

by on

Meredith Root-Bernstein ’04 Reflection

“I loved reading the Nassau Weekly.”

by on

A Sprained Ankle and Two Princeton Plagues

A rumination on campus culture and personal pain.

by on

Dream Diary

“As the months passed, we became two strangers who would only ever meet in dreams.”

by on