Welcome to Princeton

Princeton's Graduate College is a lovely little place, a cluster of Gothic buildings dropped down a half-mile from the main campus. The Old Graduate College is medieval--flying buttresses, stained glass windows, topped by a tower that drips with gargoyles and grotesques. The New Graduate College--where I live--is more modern. Its buildings resemble a bunch of bricks clumped around a few grassy courts. The windows are huge, so anyone walking by can look right into the building's guts.

Did I mention the modern art? Outside my dorm, there is a modern art statue that looks less like art and more like a failed attempt at rigging up a tent. Maybe the sculptor got frustrated and walked away halfway through the job, leaving us with a bunch of metal tubes twisted into an unpleasant lump. Generations of mathematics grad students have gone mad trying to comprehend it.

Back of the Graduate College is a quaint stone cottage that, presumably, was borrowed by Peter Jackson for a couple Shire scenes in The Fellowship of the Ring. Its quaintness is beyond reckoning. This is Wyman House (I think) where the graduate college dean lives (I think). Living near grad students is no doubt more relaxing than living with undergrads. Less partying, more weeping and gnashing of teeth.

More updates to come. On a final note: the weather here is gorgeous. Our sky is blue and our temperatures temperate. The forecast for next week, of course, calls for a massive blizzard, followed by tornadoes.