School Bell

It's possible that TigerBlog has never been more confused about what day of the week it's been than he has in the last few days. 

It started on Thursday morning, when he thought he'd forgotten to take the garbage cans to the curb, because he thought it was Friday, which is collection day. Why'd he think it was Thursday? Because he had a game to cover the next day, which made him think the next day was Saturday.

By Sunday, he was all confused. Then came a Monday holiday, which felt like Sunday. He also woke up Sunday thinking he'd forgotten to write an entry, before he realized that it was indeed Sunday and then the Monday holiday.

All day yesterday, of course, felt like a Monday, because it was the back-to-work day after the weekend. He even wrote "Monday TigerBlog" on his tweet and had to delete it and change it to Tuesday. It didn't help that he was writing yesterday about Jimmy Buffett and had the song "Come Monday" in his head, even though it wasn't Monday.

Today, TB is pretty sure, is Wednesday. Yesterday, he's positive, was the first day of classes at Princeton.

With the still relatively new academic calendar, classes at Princeton begin the Tuesday after Labor Day. If you didn't have access to a calendar, you'd have no trouble figuring it out if you simply drove down Washington Road from Nassau Street yesterday morning. 

As TB made his way towards Faculty Road, Washington Road was a sea of Princeton students on Day 1 of classes. It took him back to what the first day of classes was always like, which was a bit of uncertainty, a bit of excitement, a new syllabus, a renewal of the academic rigors of being a college student.

Just as there are friendships that form on athletic teams, there are also friendships that come from being in the same class, or classes, that endure forever. 

There are any number of Princeton freshman athletes who have played multiple games before taking a college class. 

One of them is Sydney Draper of the women's volleyball team, who was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week after Princeton defeated Niagara and Bucknell 3-0 each at the Bison's tournament. Draper made the all-tournament team after leading Princeton with 66 assists and tied with another freshman, Sydney Bold, in digs with 21. 

The men's water polo team scored 32 goals this weekend to open its season, and four of those came from freshmen: three for Will Swart and one from Tigran Sennett. Kristof Kovacs, another freshman, started the 18-3 win over George Washington in goal.

Princeton had two freshmen who played every minute of its overtime loss to North Carolina in field hockey Sunday (Hope Delaney and Ottilie Sykes) and a third who started the overtime (Ella Cashman). Sykes has played every minute of both games so far.

As for sophomores, they probably can't figure out a good way to measure just how far ahead of where they were a year ago they are now. Juniors are relishing the fact that they are entrenched now in their Princeton experience but don't quite have to worry about a thesis yet. Seniors can't believe how fast the time has been going.

In the mid-afternoon yesterday, the marketing and communications staffs set up a backdrop outside Caldwell Field House and invited any athletes or coaches, or pretty much anyone who walked by, to hold the "First Day Of School" sign and get a picture taken. It's become a fun opening day of school tradition here.

And now it's a new semester. Princeton University has been educating students since 1746. It took 118 years after that to have the first intercollegiate athletic event. The school was first known as the College of New Jersey, until changing its name to Princeton University in 1896, which also means that it's still 23 years away from being called by its current name longer than its former one.

Ask any Princeton athlete why he or she chose to come here, and they will all say the same thing: It's the combination of athletics and academics. It's a true student-athlete experience, neither side of the hyphen more important than the other to the overall education, and the sum of them together are what it means to experience Education Through Athletics.

Good luck to all Princeton students this year, athletes and non-athletes. 

You're at a school that is not easy — but you made the right choice to come to it.