the princeton diaries

dear friends,

after just over 48 hours in the garden state i am back at the icrm with much to report... i only have the brain power to go chronologically...

sunday- left the manor around noon, met chris at the airport after 5. boo and hiss to circling in the air for an additional fiddy minutes (on a scheduled 1.5 hour flight) because of traffic at newark. since chris is the best, i got to enjoy a drive through scenic newark and north central new jersey. parts are post-apocalyptic. arrived in princeton in about an hour, the delightful megan who is starting culinary school in july had made all of this amazing indian food including naan bread (who can make their own naan bread? even the indian resto in snowdon can't make naan bread)... chris and megan call their neighbourhood a trailer park... let us just say that the married student housing is cheaper for a reason. it is not glam and looks much like military quarters in trenton. picture 200 identical mint green bungalows. but they are clean and safe and close to school.

monday- the day of meetings and freaking out about meetings. my first meeting was not until 11:30 but chris had to go in for a class at 9 so i went in with him but chose to skip the class in favour of wandering around town. chris instructed me on how to find the record store... and it is possibly the only thing i could provide you with directions to. i managed to chill for a bit walking around rockin with pinky... but at around 10:30 i started to have a panic attack about my first meeting. i would have killed for a vallium.

the first meeting was with 'famous' family sociologist and current president of the population assocition. the first thing she mentioned was that celine (one of my profs here) had spoke to her at the population association meeting over the weekend. because they all know i accepted, she was like tell me all about you and your interests. it went fine and she has the most charming texas accent. she did tell me a lot about the community of family scholars there who all work on the same data set and meet weekly to discuss their work. it seems like a terrifically useful thing to have a group of people who are just as familiar with the data as you but for different reasons at your disposal.

after the first meeting, it was time for lunch with the grad students... met some more people including some other prospective graduate students (mixed bag and may not all end up at p'ton). after lunch i had time for another panic attack. (some of you recieved phone calls and text messages...) then it was meeting with most cited author from the asr/chair of grad studies who is incredibly jovial for a genius... but he asked me a gazillion questions about the paper that i sent as my writing sample when all i really wanted to know was about how i could get out of some requirements... (the answer to that is i need to talk to individual professors, but i could test out of anything i wanted...)...

next up was bob, who has the nicest office ever. the nicest office of any that i saw at princeton. he basically has his own conference room. chris believes it is bigger than their apartment. i am so so happy that i will be working with him, not because of the office... but because he is just the nicest. he pointed out that he still has the picture of our seminar group from three summers ago in his office... and we talked about things i can do next year and some of the larger projects he is starting...

in short order there was another meeting but this one was cut short by the fact that the prof was doing the intro to the author meets critic session to follow. i know the least about this woman's work but she was very enthusiastic and kept telling me how bob was a wonderful human being and how princeton is obviously a perfect match for me. i am inclined to agree.

then it was the author meets critic session for a new book just published by a junior facutly member. princeton really is making an effort to encourage and train their young faculty as well. it is a little hard to be at one of these sessions when you haven't read the book... but it was all relatively painless... except for the part where they made all the prospective students stand up. that part sucked.

then it was dinner at "prospect house" it was fancy and there was assigned seating. refer to above diagram. i should note that i was sandwiched between two other prominent people... but obviously ending up at the table with mr. bowling alone was insane.

good things said by r.p : 1) i think you should have applied to harvard 2) queen's is a very very good school

[he has this whole thing about the power of place and how where you grow up influences what you study whether you like it or not and there is enormous power in where you end up for college. he grew up in a small town and went to swarthmore, which he believes are the defining experiences of his life]

mean things said by putnam about sociologists: he quite cleverly asked how many sociological theorists (that would be studied in an intro sociological theory class) were born before the 19th century or in the 20th century. and then suggested that since most everything in sociology has its foundation in theoretical works written between 1870-1920 sociology is totally about the industrial age/revolution.

chris and i were supposed to go for a drink but i was way to tired so we headed back to the apt which was nice since megan was home and feeling better (she had pulled her back earlier) and so we just sat around and gossiped and watched bad tv.

tuesday- just one meeting with a religious studies professor whose work i have read a lot of. she was much younger than i thought she would be... but seemed terrific and also told me about how wonderful bob is as a mentor. then there was a talk at the office of population research (second floor of the sociology building... SOCIOLOGY HAS ITS OWN BUILDING WITH STUDENT OFFICES) . also the lunch (which they do every week) was thai... and sometimes they have indian or italian... de-luxe. for some reason they have labeled me a potential demographer and want to see me move to the second floor. the talk was on why poor mothers choose not to get married and i now really want to read this book.

and then chris and i walked to the dinky which takes you to the real train which takes you to the airport and then to nyc. i am glad to be familiar with that process.

hmmm. lots more but way too tired... excited about going, would never want to go through the visiting process again (although chris and megan certainly made it more pleasant for me than it had to be for some)....

i'm back and on the attack,
cam