Princeton: America's Hogwarts

Day 2: Princeton University (Princeton, New Jersey)

7:25am Train to Princeton Junction

8:20am Rent a car and drive to Princeton University

12:00pm Co-curricular ballet class

3:30pm Guided tour of campus

5:30pm Meet with Emily Knott

8:00pm Arrive at hotel 

Wow. Just. Wow. What a beautiful day. First, the weather was gorgeous, which just made everything seem more pleasant. But Princeton is just a beautiful school. And huge. Oh my goodness. It was something like 500 acres of a centralized campus. The buildings were stunning--such an amalgam of architectural styles I've never before seen. 

First you have this sort of building. It's modern. It's amazing. It's beautiful. It has lots of books in it. I love it. 

Then you turn around and see this.                                                    

Yeah this is where I took my ballet class. 

Then you turn around again and find that the Greco-Roman Empire threw Princeton a souvenir. 

Just the admissions office.

Go inside the buildings and you'll find normal things like books, offices, classrooms, tyrannosaurus rex, lecture halls, cafeterias, oh wait what? 

Don't mind me, I'm just a 40 foot long dinosaur skeleton-- perfectly complete and made of actual fossilized bone. Not a replica. Not synthetic. Just the real thing straight out of the ground. Except for the skull. They keep the real skull somewhere else because it's too heavy to hang on display. 

So yeah. I was impressed. 

Now for the ballet class: 

The ballet class I took was really amazing. My back is being all spastic and cramping again, so it was an unusually painful class, but still really good. The class was a walk-in. That simply means you didn't have to be in the dance program or anything, you could just walk in whenever you wanted to take class. It was insanely cool. 

We talked with the dance director afterwards and she explained that Princeton doesn't offer a major in dance, they only offer certificates (which are basically equivalent to a minor). But in addition to curricular classes (courses you sign up and pay for), they offer technical modern and ballet classes every day, Monday through Friday, at 12:00 for anyone who wants to come. With this set up, you can take as many or as few ballet classes a week. 

Theoretically, I could sign up for 1 curricular class which would be 6 hours of classes a week and take an additional 5+ hours of the walk in classes whenever I could. But come finals week or the deadline for a major paper, there would be no pressure to come to the additional classes as they are completely optional and completely free.

 Overall, I got the impression that dancing at Princeton is whatever you want it to be. It could prepare you for a professional career after college, or it could just be recreational. They have several performance opportunities and there are a lot of student dance groups on campus that I could join. Basically, their program is designed  so that you don't have to choose between continuing an intense dance education and a rigorous academic life. I'm pretty much in love with how this is set up because it entirely removes the apparent ultimatum of choosing between dance and school. Or at least it delays it another four years. 

For ballerinas: The style was described as "American ballet" and I felt right at home in the studio. I didn't notice any really obscure terminology and there certainly wasn't anything I had never seen before. One interesting little twist with this teacher is that with the exception of center adage, we did everything twice--once slow, once faster. This teacher also gave really simple exercises as far as remembering them goes, but they were killer. She was also really good about giving corrections. She didn't give many to the visiting students, though she did correct my hyperextended elbow in the arabesque line. She also gave the "correction" (though it's really more of a personal preference that I didn't pick up from her mark) that she prefers to land pirouettes in attitude to the corner, rather than directly side. One last thing--the studios. I fit in a HUGE tombe pas de bourre glissade and four, yes four, grande jetes in one side for grande allegro and almost died I was so happy. Okay that's it. 

Overall, I absolutely adored Princeton. I love the campus, the environment, the culture, the noise level (it was so quite all over campus), the fact that its residential, the dance program, and I mean you can't question the caliber of the academics. It's Princeton. The only drawback I have is the fact that all of their majors are really specific. You can't major in Biology, you have to pick evolutionary biology or molecular biology. It does seem, however, that while their system for majors is a little more structured than most places, it emphasizes diversity and becoming all around well educated. They require that every student become proficient (4-5 semesters usually) in a foreign language, and they don't allow you to declare a major before your junior year. It's certainly a system I could live with. Out of ten, Princeton is probably a 9.5,  or--more realistically-- out of 2pi, it's an 11pi/6. 

Yeah. I'm sold.