Transcript from video interview with President Tilghman
What would you say to those of us who feel
proud yet a little intimidated about coming to Princeton?
The first thing I would say is that I'm very happy that you're
proud to be coming to Princeton. I think you should feel proud
that you're coming to Princeton. As for feeling intimidated,
I think the most important thing to remember is that every
single student who comes to Princeton is feeling exactly the
same way -- at the beginning. Many of you have undoubtedly
been one of the most successful students in your high school,
and you will suddenly be together with nothing but students
who have been the most successful students in their high school,
and just remember that everyone is going to feel pretty much
the same way that you're feeling in the first few weeks.
What are the most rewarding aspects of being a first year
student at Princeton?
Oh, I think the most rewarding thing in your first year is
discovery. You're going to discover people from different
parts of the world. You're going to discover students from
different cultures, from different religious backgrounds,
from different parts of the United States and I hope that
what you do in your first year is to explore all of the extraordinary
richness in student life that exists on campus. The other
thing you're going to discover is academic disciplines that
you have never been exposed to. You're going to discover Philosophy,
and you're going to discover Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
and you're going to discover Genomics -- my own field. And
I think it's just going to be a remarkably exciting time.
Now, is it all work, or do students have
fun here?
It is lots of work, as it should be, but in fact, students
have a great deal of fun here. There are literally hundreds
of extracurricular activities that students become involved
in on campus, everything from the performing arts, to writing
for a variety of campus newspapers and weeklies, to club sports,
to varsity sports. There is a fair at the very beginning of
the academic year where you will be overwhelmed with all the
kinds of activities that you can participate in, and most
of those activities end up being some of the most wonderful
experiences you will have at Princeton.
What are the most challenging aspects of
being a new student at Princeton?
I think the most challenging aspects are learning to balance
your time commitments. Students at Princeton are pulled in
lots of different directions in their choice of activities.
There are going to be the challenges of meeting your academic
responsibilities, finding the kinds of activities that you
want to spend your time outside the classroom, and, of course,
meeting and making friends that you'll have for the rest of
your life. And learning to balance those three things is one
of the biggest challenges of first-year student -- at any
university but certainly at Princeton. The other challenge
is, for many students, this will be the first time you've
ever lived away from home, and it is different
to suddenly be independent, to be able to make decisions about
how you want to spend your time, how you want to make choices
about how you want to spend your time that used to be made
in part by your parents and will not be made by anyone except
yourself now. That is another, I think, large challenge when
you're a first-year student.
How do I get my parents to chill and stop worrying about
my going away to school?
Well, I think there are a number of things that you can tell
your parents that will reassure them that you are going to
be safe at Princeton. The first is that Princeton, of course,
is in a town that is a very safe town. It is a place where
there is very little crime -- very little of the kinds of
things that parents worry about when they think about their
children going away from home. The second is that you will
spend your first two years at Princeton living in the residential
colleges, and those colleges have all kinds of mechanisms
to ensure that no student gets lost in the system of the University.
We have a master of the college, we have assistant masters,
we have academic advisers, residential advisers. Everywhere
you turn for your next two years when you're living in [the
residential] college will be people who, if you need help,
they will be there to help you and give you advice -- from
the kind of courses you should be taking to whether you are
really well-advised to be staying up until three in the morning
every evening. So I think that your parents should feel some
degree of reassurance that, although you are definitely living
on your own and the expectation is you will be making a lot
of choices on your own, there will be people there to give
you good advice.
What's the best way to spend the last summer before starting
college? And how did you spend yours?
Well, I spent my summer between high school and college working
in a bank as a teller. It was a very good experience. I had
a wonderful time working with the people who worked in the
bank. And, most importantly from my parents' perspective,
I earned some money that would help contribute to the costs
of college in the fall.
I think students can have all kinds of different summer experiences.
I know that some students will look for opportunities to make
money as, in fact, I did when I was a student. I think some
students will look for opportunities to begin academic experiences
that they anticipate at Princeton by taking summer courses,
by having internships in other places in the country and potentially
even in other places in the world. And I certainly hope that
some students will choose to do community service projects
over the summer, because one of the things that we think is
important at the University is for students to be involved
in helping others.
Do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to
leave us with?
We thought long and hard about each one of you before we
offered you a place in the class. You were chosen among some
of the most exceptional students in the world -- international
and national students and we are eager to have you here in
the fall -- to begin to integrate you into what I hope will
be the sense of life-long engagement with Princeton University.
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