06/20/2026
Ash and I took a brief but thoroughly enjoyable walk around the fourth oldest university in the US (1746) a few weeks back.
I think your brain (or at least mine did) can become almost numb to hearing about these storied places in American history, and then you take a visit yourself, place yourself in the actual steps of James Madison, Alan Turing, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Albert Einstein, Michelle Obama, John Forbes Nash, etc and it changes your perception a bit.
Sure, having not had anything close to a traditional college experience may have jaded my view of something as elite as the literal Ivy League, but the gravity of the influence a singular place can have on the pages of history can absolutely be felt when you’re there in person.
With only 2 hours and 1 cup of coffee (each, duh) we got our steps in across some of the central, historical section of the very Harry Potter feeling campus and eventually landed inside the Princeton University Chapel. I understand that being built in the 1920s makes it one of the younger notable churches in the world, but its weight and age were felt from the moment you stepped inside.
I think one of the reasons people enjoy traveling is because it allows you to place yourself inside of the footsteps and decisions others made throughout history, and you can physically see and touch what those footsteps and decisions created and those people were able to leave behind.
Honestly, in hindsight, I wish we’d had more time.